Sims 2 cars were not pointless. Far from it. There was a car you could fix up and eventually use which would improve a sims tinkering hobby. Cars could be used to take children to school, drive to work, cars could be stolen by the burglar. Cars could be used for woohoo and to sit and listen to the radio in. If you had a car and went down town you could use the car the car to skip out on a bill. Certain NPC sims had car preferences which would improve your dates with them.
For me the lack of cars in 4 is immersion breaking in the same way it’s immersion breaking watching children leave for school by teleporting at the end of the lot. It’s unrealistic and quite frankly weird after four years a basic feature is still missing.
