Personally, I actually appreciate compression for certain material. (I know this is blasphemy to some audiophiles, who will now sniff "coarse oaf" and move on...)
In most of my real world listening environments, there is background noise, and sometimes also a need to avoid disturbing others with loud noise.
The background noise means I have to turn up the volume to hear the quietest parts of a passage, and then, if it has a huge dynamic range, the loud parts explode at a very high volume (SPL).
Conversely, if I limit the volume based on the loudest parts, then I have to strain to hear the quietest parts.
This is a problem, for many of my listening situations.
Compression helps to alleviate this problem.
As for the automobile as listening environment: Background noise is HUGE in a vehicle, even so-called "quiet" luxury vehicles. A large dynamic range can be even more of a problem in a vehicle, due to the background noise - especially with material like classical, which frequently exploits dynamic range to the fullest. Turn up the volume to hear the quiet passage, then get beaten by the sudden crashing loud passage. So, compression is even more helpful, in this case.
A large dynamic range CAN be used to improve the overall quality of material, without the problems noted above (by virtue of the lowered noise floor in the material). But too much material overuses it (e.g. the classical music example), for typical listening situations in the real world.
