I'm not sure when this "golden age" of gaming was. I remember trying to play 'The Hobbit' in 1982 on a 48K spectrum and it being utterly unplayable because of it's many game breaking bugs.
Frontier : First encounter is another stand out moment from my gaming youth.
Games have always had bugs......ever since they were very first made.
I have to admit though I am suprised to find people complain about bugs in GT5. Compared to many modern games it seems to me to be a relatively bug free game.
Try playing 'Fallout : New Vegas' some time and then tell me if you think GT5 is riddled with bugs.
I was born in 1983 if that gives you a clue.

10-15 years ago. Twisted Metal 1,2,3 GT1, 2, 3 (only bug I know of was completion %), Sonic games, Andretti Racing, older Mortal Kombats when fatalities weren't handed out on a silver platter, Timesplitters 1,2 most NFS titles before Shift, Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, Area 51, Hang Time, Streets of Rage, NBA Jam, Madden '04, NASCAR '98, to name a few, never encountered bugs of significance in
any of these games. Maybe there were a few, but they never disrupted my gameplay, which is what matters to me.
Try playing 'Fallout : New Vegas'
Interesting, as the last reply I got on bugs was insinuating most new games are relatively bug free.
And I think you may be forgetting what GT5 is exactly, for anyone
offline. If you can't update, TBH, GT5 pretty much sucks, flat-out. Loads of content, diddly for features and gameplay all make GT5 a dull boy in true offline play.
I haven't touched A-Spec mode in
months and that was only a spurt because of the updated cash and XP, another thing you may have forgotten is the
original level of rewards in GT5, among other things.
Raven_WET01
All things considered, there's no reason for this game to have turned out this way. It seems like a complete lack of planning from the beginning and no organization. For the few people that have played this game without any updates (I got a chance at a friend's house one time), you would be appalled at what they considered "ready to ship." A lot of the things we take for granted weren't even included initially. Tires wouldn't cool down or stop smoking once they heated up, you had to attempt to buy specific parts before it would tell you they weren't available, and they weren't checked off once you did buy them. I'm sorry, but Gran Turismo shouldn't just be good by videogame standards. It has the second highest production budget of all time, so why is it so incomplete?
While I don't actually care for most things you mentioned, and I disagree that JGTC cars are alike, as each is in fact different, some quite different, you're final and overall point is spot-on.
This is the largest, highest selling racing franchise of all time, which took an extraordinary amount of time to create, and it
is very half-assed.
The updates have helped, but they've mostly given what should have been included in the first place, so I can't ship to much kudos to PD for them, as of now, there are still things left out that should have been in from day one, and it's a pretty big list.
Most notably, the
most requested feature (last I checked) feature on GTPlanet, endurance saves / multiple drivers for endurance races. Not to touch the logistics on a single driver IRL taking on 24 hours of racing straight.