Test benches represent a valid tool to transfer vehicle-based assessments to a laboratory environment allowing efficient testing in preliminary stages of the automotive development process. For steering systems, the achievement of a brand specific steering feel represents a fundamental goal of the development. Due to the subjective nature of the term “steering feel,” objective metrics need to be identified, which accurately describe individual aspects of steering feel. In this contribution, a steering test bench it utilized to assess steering feel outside the vehicle. Therefore, fifteen hardware variants and sixteen software variants of one steering system are subjectively evaluated by an expert driver in the vehicle. For the objective description of these evaluations, a 4-Layer- Testspecification is derived, which ranges from ideal approximation of driving scenarios in layer one to characterization approaches of the passive steering system in layer four, aiming to study the influence of abstraction on the correlation results. Additionally, the test bench is expanded to a static driving simulator, where the surroundings are either displayed on a 2D monitor or virtual reality glasses. The results of the correlation analysis identify various objective metrics which successfully describe the selected subjective criteria. Driving simulator assessments also correlate with the reference evaluations from the vehicle. A final validation, where the derived linear correlation models are utilized to calculate the subjective assessments, demonstrates the good approximation. Consequently, the results of this contribution facilitate the utilization of a steering test bench for subjective evaluation of steering feel.