While you can find some/many luxury features on non-luxury cars, it's rare to get everything you want on a car without those luxury prices (if you are buying new / lightly used, and you get outdated if you go too far out).

Let's list some of the features that modern cars have which significantly improve the utility of them to most drivers, and which are considered (by the market) to be worth 45k+

Blind spot monitors, rear/side cross traffic alert, auto-dimming mirrors, digital mirrors (for when you have tons of cargo blocking mirrors), Backup/360 Panoramic Cameras, Parking Sensors, heads up display (massive safety benefit), Satellite Radio, lane keep assist, radar cruise control, pre-collision and collision mitigation systems (active breaking), improved design / additional weight for safety in collisions, more and better airbags. Better seats, better audio system, Nicer infotainment systems with Carplay/Andriod Auto, Hybrid/PHEV/EV powertrain, better reliability (if you pay Toyota/Lexus/Honda/Acura tax), semi-autonomous driving (Tesla)

I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff, but having recently purchased a 42K car with nearly all of these features and upgrading from a life of being driven in shitty base model kias, I find the utility gained from purchasing an expensive car to be MASSIVE. Driving went from being a frustrating chore to a pleasurable experience.

The risk of death dropping by an order of magnitude is alone worth the money, let alone the massive comfort improvements.

> Granted, I don't even like cars or driving

Don’t you feel like you answered your own question there?

It’s like asking why anyone would spend money on tasty food when some cheap foods are all you need to survive.

> Does anyone else have difficulty understanding why anyone would pay this much for a car?

Not really. I mean I've never spent that much on a car and I'm not sure I ever will, but I did spent $5000 on a computer one time. That's an order of magnitude more than most people pay for computers, and while nice, it sure isn't 10x better than a $500 computer would have been. But I spent the $5k, because a) I had the money and b) I really really realllly wanted that computer.

EDIT: In case anyone is curious about the $5000 computer, it was this one back in 1999, and no, it was absolutely not worth it in the end: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g3/specs/powerb...

The utility increase of going from a ~2000 to a ~5000 computer can be significantly more than 10x depending on the domain.

For instance, if you buy a 3090 Nvidia GPU with 24 gigs of VRAM, you are capable of training AI models that are eminently more capable of getting publications accepted than an owner of a 3080 would. (Yes, distributed training is possible, no it is not always an option). Sure, it's nowhere near 10X in gaming or flop improvement, but the relative capabilities offered by a top of the line computer can become exponentially more useful compared to a significantly cheaper computer.

I've never spent that much for a computer either, but the computer is somewhat more understandable because presumably that price buys you performance that has utility. For the most part that extra money doesn't buy you utility in cars because speed limits can be easily reached, and exceeded, without it.

Utility has many dimensions.

How fast a car can go is one, how many people it can transport is another, how few emissions it creates is another.

Someone might be willing to drop big bucks on a Tesla Model X to haul their family around rather than a used Dodge Caravan ... not because it'll get them between Point A and Point B more quickly or because it can carry more people, but because it doesn't emit CO2.

Point being that we don't all value the same things, and while I wouldn't make the same decisions as other people much the time, I can certainly understand how people come to (sometime vastly) different decisions than me.

EDIT: I have an uncle who is an emergency room doctor, and I guess after seeing all of those car crash victims, his car-buying decisions have always been based entirely on safety. So he's driven an otherwise unlikely progression of cars, some luxury, some not, based on whatever seemed to be the safest new car available.

Don’t discount that a big part of the “utility” of a vehicle purchase for many people is the emotional and/or status part of it. One interesting business example is a cohort who travels a lot on business and bought a $65k truck as a commuter vehicle for sales work. A $15k hatchback would have worked but their clientele attached a lot of status to a big ol’ fancy ranch truck.

Not saying it’s rational but like you said, there’s a lot of different dimensions to utility

I wondered if that was going to be:

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/specs/powerma...

- because they were gorgeous!