It works fine if you manufacture after a sale. Just look at millions of computer options. But, the current car model is to make a car then find a buyer which means you really want a small number of popular models.
Tesla is the largest exception, but even they limit options.
But they rarely ever offer a vehicle with all the options. It's either base model, option pack A, option pack B. Rarely do you get the chance to say you know what, just slam all of those in there. Give me top of the line everything... except auto-dimming rear-view mirror, compass and and blind spot information system.
The things that they make you choose between are ridiculous. It's like they put all the features on lottery balls, spin the bucket and pick 6 at random for each package and that's what you get. At least make the feature packages make sense
Usually they do, it's just that that option is quite expensive and you might not care about some (or most) of the features you get in that option. It's particularly bad if you anti-care about some of the options. For instance, if you are opposed to having leather seats, you can't get the highest trim, coz leather seats are a feature there.
For eg. Honda Accord 2018 with all bells and whistles starts at $33.8K while the lowest one starts at $23.5K. There's a good chance that a 40% increase over the base price will put that car out of the budget of a lot of people.
Acura TLX has the option for automatic cruse control, lane followings, and automatic breaking. It has a second option for blind spot detection and several other things. Want both? They have a third option that includes both plus some other stuff but it costs even more.
I mean why blind spot detection as part of the safty package when you can charge 3x as much to include it.
Assembling a computer with 10-15 modular parts (Motherboard, RAM, Graphic Card etc.) is very different from assembling a car when a lot of the features you want need extra hardware and software inside the car.
And as much as I like Tesla, I don't think they are yet at a stage where they can be used as an example of what is possible in the manufacturing world at scale. And they hardly offer any many options. AND, some of their options are just software switches that can be flipped whenever you want the upgrade. That's possible for the model S because it's a very high margin car.
Tesla is the largest exception, but even they limit options.