Is expensive always luxurious?

Karl thinks cars could be made more affordable by manufacturers curbing excesses. But he wonders if a car simply needs to be expensive to be considered luxurious? When a story broke recently in Australia about a car company CEO’s alleged misuse of company money, shock waves reverberated around the world. Not just because the head office in America was furious about where the money was going, but because just about every car company in the world took a good, long look at itself. Let’s give you a bit of background. The CEO of Fiat Chrysler in Australia, a man named Clyde Campbell, is alleged to have misappropriated more than $30 million, which went to luxury goods, a private boat (labelled as a floating billboard), sponsorship deals, and cars to hundreds of A, B, C, and D-grade celebrities. At each Christmas party during his tenure, the company allegedly spent close to a million dollars booking out rooms in hotels, luxury spa treatments, and other niceties. There were underhanded deals between advertising companies and questionable relationships with directors of website companies, with costs going through the roof. So how did no-one notice? The Australian dollar was on parity with the US dollar, which meant car prices were slashed – and they sold Grand Cherokees by the boatload. And while cars were being shifted and Chrysler was being bought out by Fiat, no one raised an eyebrow – until a finance journalist broke the story a few weeks ago, and the house of cards came crashing down. But the gift-giving and luxury travel isn’t limited to Fiat Chrysler down under. It goes much, much further than that. As journalists, we get treated to some unique experiences, and you can see why the public relations teams for car companies try to make each launch as different as they can – a positive experience should translate to a positive review. But we’re also a little numb to it all and can quite objectively review a car based solely on its own merits. You could argue, of course, that flying a group of journalists to drive a car at a central location is more cost-effective than shipping the cars halfway around the world to test. But what is a little harder to swallow is the excessiveness that goes along with it. And how some journos expect it to be that way. Gifts such as pens, caps, fancy USB sticks – fair enough. But when car companies are giving away iPads? Now they’re overreaching a bit. Add to that the lunches and dinners in Michelin-starred restaurants, opulent hotels, boat trips, personalised tours of cities and first-class flights, and it all becomes a bit wasteful. But journos aren’t the only ones who get such treatment. Movie stars, musicians, sports stars – they get free cars plus money to be ambassadors. And then there are the dinners where chefs are flown in and warehouses converted to an instant restaurant so that customers can say they’ve hobnobbed with A-listers. Just think about the money that gets burned every minute around the globe with such silliness. If these sponsorships, movie nights, gifts and other excesses were culled, imagine how much cheaper our cars would actually be. You’d probably find that Mercs, Audis or Bentleys would actually be more achievable for the average buyer. But that may not sit well with some people. The question we need to ask is this – does a luxury car have to be expensive for it to be viewed as luxurious? If so, it says more about our society than it does the car itself.