Is Recording quality the real culprit?

My biggest issue is with vinyl pressing quality. I can't even hear what they intended in the studio because most modern pressings are so poor. Sure there's a few high fidelity companies and people trying to push the envelope, but there's just so much horrid vinyl out there it makes the music unlistenable for the modern music fan. 

I believe you have to consider the mixing and mastering as well as the recording.  I have some originals on vinyl and CD that do not sound nearly as good as the remastered version streamed on Qobuz.

Comparing car audio to a HEA system with vinyl playback is ludicrous!

When I was a young person over half a century ago I thought that a bad recording was doomed to provide an unsatisfying listening experience too.  Then I got a pair of Stax electrostatic headphones, SR-5s.  One night, after enjoying Workingman’s Dead in its glorious Wally Heider produced stereo sound, I put on a Chess reissue of Howling Wolf…More Real Folk Blues…and was flabbergasted that these crude, raunchy, monaural recordings, often displaying gross mic overload, sounded thrillingly alive and immediate.  I learned that a truly linear, cohesive, distortion free transducer, like electrostatic headphones, could let any recording shine.  This was before punk rock, of course!  Having speakers that do this trick is a more challenging task.

Excessive compression is easily number one culprit, luckily I don't listen to a lot of this overly produced drivel. Perhaps recording quality has helped subconsciously steer me towards less commercial artists. Still, I'd say unlistenable recordings few and far between, I can usually hear past the warts and get into the music.

I'd suggest the ability to listen to lesser recordings says as much about us as our systems. Quit the critical analysis of sound, accept it as presented, once you get past this you can enjoy the performance.