Static
A simple monopole antenna tuned to the FM band should be almost 3 feet long. Notice that your Belkin box doesn't have that. When you touch the gooseneck, you couple some of the signal out your arm, and you become the antenna. Sort of.
Also, your car radio antenna is in a terrible position to receive it. It may even be on the roof of your car, which is great for receiving vertically polarized FM stations from far away but bad for receiving signals from inside the car, through sheet metal.
The other problem is that there are legal limits to what these gadgets can transmit. I had one that really stunk, and when I took it apart it had a spot labeled "ANT" on the circuit board, and with a 32 inch piece of wire attached, the power radiated was 20 dB higher ... that's 100 times as much. I picked it up almost 100 feet away. Your old one probably put out too much power.
Now if you wound a couple foot long piece of wire around your Belkin and fooled around with it a bit, you'd probably notice that the signal comes in nice and clear, because it takes the place of your arm grabbing the gooseneck. You could clip the other end somewhere where it wouldn't rattle around. But, you know, that could be ******* and folks in cars around you might hear it.
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