Now you're comparing general over-world to specific localities. FFXV has American-style ranches (the Chocobo ranch) and gas-stations including typical restaurant, fancy hotels in a Havana-inspired mining-town and many more. How are those less interesting than a Sushi-bar and a Texan saloon?At least in the examples you provide the places are inspired by interesting themes and concepts. Areas inspired by a sushi bar or a Texan saloon are rich and interesting. Driving a car down a road is never interesting. It is boring, banal and generic.
And if we're talking about the simple over-world, which was your original complaint, FFVII and FFVIII had plain, generic over-worlds, too. Why where those more exciting to explore again? The Buggy and car in those were optional, outside of mandatory moments to advance the story or cross artificial barriers on the over-world, the same as the car in FFXV apparently.
What does this even mean? How are FFXV's Venice-, Havana-, Tokyo- and Manchester-inspired cities with their respective different climate, vegetation, means of transportation and levels of technologies (more medieval in Niflheim and the rest of the world versus the high-technology Insomnia) "directly comparable" and not "inspiring a sense of exploration"?It just doesn't make me want to dive in and explore that world in the least. It doesn't inspire a sense of exploration, it just inspires a sense of tedium. In previous games with vehicles we see entirely different times, different contexts and different graphics - not directly comparable in the least.
If the car made up a small portion of the game, it wouldn't really matter. But this is apparently the main way to get around. That's what I'm bothered about, that, and the woeful character design and the serious lack of diversity too.
The driving parts can most likely be skipped anyway if set on auto-pilot to just get to the next story section. Maybe you can use Chocobos instead for most of the game outside of the critical parts where the car has to be with you (like crossing the ocean with your car on a boat/ship), who knows. If driving a car is such a pain for you you could walk everywhere and have your car brought to you by Cidney (this feature was confirmed at PAX) if necessary.
You could very well just admit that you aren't interested in the game and not try to justify it by hypocritical arguments that are mostly based on nostalgia for FFVII/FFVIII.