Loughborough Uni dept of Ergonomics do this type of stuff and have done work for companies like Bentley, Aston Martin, Land Rover… perhaps they can share some contacts.
When I did my masters there, there was an Aston Martin designer taking the ergonomics module with us. When we were asked to bring an object and talk about its ergonomic shortcomings - he brought the center console from DB7 
I believe touchscreens can be very appropriate and successful in cars, they just need to rely on gestures and not GUI. It doesn’t even has to be screen, just touch.