When we all were shooting film, Kodak, Fuji and other companies made big announcements whenever they came out with a new film that had richer and more saturated colors, such as Fujichrome Velvia. In addition, we used polarizing filters to punch up the color, especially in the sky. Photographers were always looking for ways to add visual impact, and saturated color does that.
The reason I don't use a polarizing filter with digital image making is because it's so easy in post-processing to add color saturation using only software. The abandoned car I photographed in the Namib Desert in Namibia is an example. In Adobe Camera Raw, I used the vibrance slider as well as the saturation slider, and the image really pops. I shot this with a 24-105mm lens at the widest focal length at f/16.