GLA45. Which yes, is nothing more than a fancy A class, so some excuses I've heard were "well, it's a 'cheap' AMG, what were you expecting". I don't know what was I expecting, maybe only that a £55k car won't have crappy plastics everywhere that creak every time you go over any bump.

Having said that - I've spent enough time on AMG forums to know that the same problem exists even if you buy a C63 or E63, the build quality of the interior just isn't great(while the mechanical engineering arguably is, those cars are very reliable when it comes to the actual mechanical bits)

Well, it is a cheap AMG... :-P

But yeah, that's a weird segment that car is in. It's expensive, because the engine is expensive, but at the same time you're getting the exact same interior and fit-and-finish as the non-AMG versions of that class, which means an AMG S-class is very nice, while an AMG A-class is just not very nice at all. So yeah, your experience sounds exactly like what I would expect out of that specific model, and by just looking at the price tag, it's not very intuitive that that's what you're gonna get.