It turns out I was mistaken! I haven’t done enough research to determine the actual cause of the effect I have noticed. It might be hydraulic vs electric but I don’t want to make that assumption and be wrong again - I’m going to have to research the steering in other cars I’ve noticed that issue in.
There’s definitely a different feel to the electric motor driven assist. Though there are just many different implementations probably the specific one you had was particularly quirky.
Relatedly I had a Hyundai i30 for a while which has a well known fault where the plastic gear connection (called a Spyder Bush) from the electric motor to the steering column would break. Resulting in slop and a clunk. Not hard to imagine similar failures or bad design.
