For many years I avoided purchasing newer cars due to the Airbags. Fact is that Airbags don't provide much additional protection in a frontal crash if
you are wearing good seat belts.. But we are stuck with Airbags because people just couldn't get it into their heads to actually use seat belts so now we have a system that will injure or kill you if you don't wear seat belts.
As for steering wheels, I miss the wood rimmed steering wheel that was installed in my first car, a
1970 VW Beetle. Yeah, for a short time VW offered a Formula Vee package for the Beetle and one of the tidbits was a nice wood rimmed steering wheel. Since my FiST is sort of a reincarnation of the Beetle (with a power to weight ration of 200/2720 versus the Beetles 67/1600) I'm sort of re-living my youth with the FiST and loving it. All it needs to be perfect is a 3 spoke brushed stainless wheel with some grade 4 or 5 Circassian Walnut. Too bad It would cost me all those Nifty controls on the current steering wheel.