I think it's fair to say this falls under grandparent's "enthusiast" category. Nothing wrong with being an enthusiast, but I think the characterization as "irrational" is probably correct.
Few human decisions are rational if you start taking that approach. You can always live in a smaller dwelling, wear worse clothes, eat cheaper food, avoid all paid entertainment, etc.
It would be better to state that the car market is not primarily based around the simple act of transportation. Which should be pretty obvious anyway.
> You can always live in a smaller dwelling, wear worse clothes, eat cheaper food, avoid all paid entertainment, etc.
Indeed. And the more of these you can check, the happier and more satisfying your life is likely to get. Why maintain an unused mansion when a small, cozy place will do? Why follow the latest fashion trends when your four year old OCBD is in fighting form? Why eat lobsters all the time when beans are so nutrient-dense and cheap?! Why sit on your ass wasting away at the behest of a mediocre film when you could read a book instead?
The other major difference, of course, is that there are few irrational decisions quite as expensive as buying an idiot pickup truck to show off. Maybe a boat or an aircraft, but not much more.
Why have a small, cozy place when you could live in a van down by the river? Why buy clothes when you can drape yourselves in discarded blankets? Why eat beans when you can haunt the dumpsters behind the local restaurants?
Of course it's a fallacy. One has to draw a line at some point. To me that line would be a way, way cheaper expense than a big, polluting truck. But it seems that to you, if I can't own a truck, I must go all the way to living in shanties/favelas and dumpster diving.
How do you decide where to draw the line? What’s the rational way to put some pleasures under the “rational” category and others under the “irrational” category?
You calibrate on what people were satisfied with thirty or a hundred years ago, eliminating modern status-seeking. You ask yourself "Would I be horrified to live like that, or do I just think I'm too good for it?" Like there's no way I am going to live as a boarder with another family, but I can definitely make my own lunch.
Life is too short to make saving money the first priority on every decision. Drive whatever you can afford and makes happiest (and makes sense for the use case you have in mind for it, offroad, snow, racing, commute time, etc).
