[riffraff]

people can afford to buy a new car and pay by instalments relatively easily, especially for small city cars which are common in Europe.

You need to have income, but you can get a car on a bluecollar salary, and an incentive of 10% on the price is significant.

If you're actually wealthy you'll want to buy a bigger car, and the same incentive is both less significant and less useful.

[kragen]

A "bluecollar salary" in Europe is enough to qualify as "wealthy"; that's why a significant number of people from my country have moved to Europe to work as waiters and kindergarten teachers and whatnot. There are lots of cars on the road here but they all belong to wealthy people or taxi drivers. And this is a middle-income country; in poor countries access to cars is even more limited.

[esotericn]

Definitionally a person who can spend 20K on a car when something serviceable is available for 2K is wealthy by some description. They have a good amount of disposable income.

I don't mean to claim that anyone who buys a new car is financially independent.