Privilege has nothing to do with it. It's a simple matter of market segment definition. It's rather silly to pretend that something like a base model A4 is a luxury vehicle when it contains barely any luxury features beyond the logo on the grill. By comparison a top trim Honda Accord lists for $35K but no one considers that a luxury car.

Personally I drive a cheap car. Average new car prices have gotten crazy high relative to median incomes, enabled by low interest long term financing. A lot of buyers are ending up overextended.

It's the same in Western Europe, the difference is that cheap lease deals and finance have made them affordable for a significant amount of people and so these cars are extremely common. You see more 3 series than Toyota's or Hyundai's.

Are you sure about that? https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46774053

Every sales graph I've ever seen has relatively cheap cars such as the Fiesta, Golf, Corsa, etc. at the top. Not big Mercedes or BMWs.

Yes. I'm not saying that people in the market for a Ford Fiesta are instead going out and buying a 3 series. People who want a hatchback and going out and buying hatchbacks.

But people who want saloons and estate cars are largely buying from the three Germans, and not Japanese or Korean.

I've heard one of the more popular cars people moved from to buy a model 3 is the toyota prius... definitely not a luxury car.

Toyota Prius do not exist in Western Europe outside Uber. They are synonymous with Uber driver and rarely ever bought for private use.

Odd. They are extremely common in California. My office mate has one, her second after giving the first to her daughter. A friend has a motorcycle accident and TWO Prius were involved.

So in the USA, or at least in California they are very common. Part of their popularity is their fleet use makes them direct cheap in the used market, and they tend to be pretty reliable despite the complexity of two separate drive trains.

I think one of the issues is that the Prius starts from $30,000 here - which is quite a lot - and a lot of cheaper, but still economical cars are available for much less.

Ah, they start around $23k here, and available used from fleet use for $12-$13k with 50-60k miles.