Your indifference to cars does not make using a car name wrong. I'm indifferent to fashion, but I am smart enough to realize that if an author calls out a specific designer when describing a scene, there is probably a reason for it.
"She walked into the room wearing a floor length Vera Wang wedding gown" says something different than "She walked into the room wearing a floor length wedding gown." I don't really follow fashion, but I recognize in the context that the dress in the first sentence means the CHARACTER follows fashion and that it is important to her. It also implies in context that the dress probably cost more than a generic wedding dress. And this could all be terribly important if we know, for example, that the character struggles to pay her bills or has financial problems, because then, hmmmm, wonder who paid for that dress?
Someone who drives a Toyota Prius has different priorities than someone who drives a Ford F-150. You don't need to know the difference between a Honda Civic or a Honda Accord specifically but telling me someone drives a Honda Civic does say something about the person as opposed to, say, driving a Shelby Mustang.
Everyone has a pet peeve. But it is never wrong to provide good description in context, including brand names, if it helps the story.
I didn't say it's wrong. I actually think it's lazy, if I'm being 100% honest.
"She walked into the room wearing a floor length Vera Wang wedding gown," is different than "She walked into the room wearing a floor length lace wedding gown painted with crystals," is different than "she walked into the room wearing a floor length wedding gown."
Pretty confident a crystal-covered wedding gown also costs more than average, but you didn't have to say Vera Wang to get that across. And I agree, it could be very important if someone paid for the dress. I'm heavily into fashion. I love fashion, and I would still be irked if someone said "Vera Wang" over describing the dress. Vera Wang still doesn't tell me much because it assumes all her dresses are the same price point which they aren't. One could be getting one of her more affordable dresses over one of her top of the line dresses.
Plus, if she's struggling to pay her bills, what if she found the dress used at a thrift store? One could describe the Vera Wang dress as frayed at the edges, missing stones, off-colored. Then it's easy to say she could afford it over a description of "crisp white" and "diamonds glistening in ballroom's light". Once you go as far to describe the physical appearance of the dress, the brand label is unnecessary.
I don't know that it's lazy, but rather I think using a brand name can convey various things to the reader. It could be a way of deepening the character without needing to go overboard with exposition, a form of shorthand. It can be part of an author's voice or lend characterization to the narrator who might come across with more specificity to the reader, deepening voice. Sometimes using brand names can further signify to a reader the genre or subgenre, telegraphs a style, or lets them know they're in the right hands or reading a thing with which they will resonate because it is material they tend to enjoy or it's a kind of treatment of certain material they tend to enjoy.
If I'm reading Bret Easton Ellis or Sophie Kinsella I think it'd be jarring not to see brand names, I think it lends something to their voice if not to their characters. It draws me into their worlds. If I'm reading some schlocky spy story because that's the experience I'm after, I imagine I would appreciate the flashy brand mentions. You can convey something similar to saying
"Vera Wang" by further describing a gown in detail, but I don't want to get too wordy or purple, and
Vera Wang pretty efficiently gets across what I'm after.
But a larger point could get lost in this digression, and that's the whole thing about being concrete. I think it's more evocative to the reader to say "thrift store" than just "store". That was more what I was getting at. You could say sedan instead of Cadillac, but even if you don't know cars Cadillac will, in most cases, evoke an image and paints a character a certain way.
Then there's the utility of the object itself which being specific can yield benefits, say in a chase scene where the vehicle's capabilities or nuances play a part. Same if you were hiding a body. There's a difference between needing to drop a corpse in the trunk of a Caddie and trying to hide a dead guy in a hatchback. One might convey the killer knows their craft, knows what tools they need, is competent. Another might convey they're a fool, or the story intrigues more because they're forced to make do with something of lesser utility. Possibilities abound.
More directly, I think my eyes would glaze over if the author wrote about the shape and size of a car or a trunk capacity as opposed to just conveying it directly by naming the make, model.
It's true many readers might not understand the distinctions in whatever subject areas, but I read plenty of books where I don't really understand the tech, or the subject matter but I appreciate that it's there because it does seem to add some authorial voice or authenticity to the story I'm reading. Mileage on this varies, of course.