All my life, I have searched for a car that feels a certain way.
Powerful like a gorilla, yet soft and yielding like a Nerf ball.
Now, at last, I have found it.
— Homer, describing his car, “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”

Where I come from we call it “turd polishing”.

Of course gold plating can have another meaning – e.g. gold plating of jewellery OR gold plating for electronic components. Gold plating is a way of embellishing metal objects – just like the term gold-plating can refer to “embellishing the facts”