Even though this wasn't explicitly called out, I'm going to guess that the cheap feeling has something to to do with the shape of the knobs and buttons. It's evident in the chunky, bulbous look of the Ford switches compared to the the chiseled knobs and concave A/C dials in that BMW which aged better.
GM cars of this era were far worse than Ford in this regard, but '90s component design in general tried too hard to eliminate crisp lines and it culminated in the damn 3rd gen Taurus. The problem with that of course is, what's the shortest distance between two points? A line. Trying to gradually round off an edge or slope it toward the adjacent surface only makes the entire component bigger than it needs to be.