Right, but you 100% _do not_ need to spend that much on a car.

Correct but many people do it's quite common. Most ordinary vehicles these days tend to be around $30,000. That's a bit more than the total yearly take home pay for someone in my region making minimum wage. Even used at half that is a large amount of money to spend on a vehicle.

People scoff at multi millionaires spending hundreds of thousands or a million dollars for a sports car. But that's a small amount of their total net worth or even their yearly salary.

Cars are so expensive to own too. I don't think people realize how much it costs to operate a vehicle let alone but it. The AAA says it costs about $7,000 per year in expenses; gas, maintenance, insurance, depreciation.