[bradlys]

This is a weird take. Has anyone here been to Miami or LA?

I’ve known a lot of people with supercars. Quite a few want the attention. If they didn’t - they would drive a different car. Very few are getting them for performance reasons. If they just wanted a performance car then they’d probably just get an open wheel.

[Balgair]

When I first moved to LA, I remember thinking that it was so strange for all these people to have these really high end cars with like 700 HP in them, all to sit in traffic all day long. Like, why bother?

Then I sat in LA traffic all day long in early September in 100+ heat, and I looked over and saw some old bitty in a very nice Bentley. Not a drop of sweat on her, couldn't hear a horn honking if she tried, music was probably perfect quality, seat was probably massaging her the whole ride home.

That's when I finally got it. It's not the engine that mattered to her.

[mrandish]

> It's not the engine that mattered to her.

People into ultra-luxury car brands have a saying something like "The person who pulls up to a five star hotel in a Rolls Royce has a huge suite but the person who pulls up in a Bentley owns the hotel." :-)

[mrandish]

> Quite a few want the attention.

Through the supercar club my wife belongs to we've now met dozens of supercar owners and from that sample I'd say it's roughly a Pareto split. For about 20% the status signaling and attention is the major feature while the other ~80% own the car for the driving performance and enjoy the look aesthetically but would prefer if it looked like a minivan to everyone else. There's also a practical consideration because a few people drive like idiots around supercars. I've been with my wife on the highway and had cars race up and start weaving dangerously in the lane next to us because the driver was shooting video of our car.

The ~20% focused on status do sort of cluster around a type. The signaling extends to clothes, jewelry, etc being overtly blingy. As a group they're more likely to do things like peel out at stop lights and drive faster than the flow of traffic. The car they own also tends to be at the bottom of the supercar range, something like a Huracan, which is technically a Lamborghini but internally based on an Audi R8. It's a nice car but my wife says (privately to me)... "Dude, just get the Audi version. Same car. Less money and the service is better."

In general, my sense is the majority of the club are passionate car enthusiasts who feel the 'status' guys (it's always guys) give supercar owners a bad rep and just roll their eyes at the attention-seeking behavior. One time when a car meet was ending, we were talking with a knowledgeable older gentleman from England. We discovered he'd been a super-licensed race driver in F3 a couple decades ago and as he was explaining the finer points of wheel-loading in low-speed corners to my wife, one of 'those guys' in a Huracan loudly peeled out of the parking lot. As the smoke was clearing, the gentleman glanced over and sniffed "The machine was engineered to accelerate without losing traction but one does need to possess a modicum of skill." :-)

[bradlys]

You’re also in a particular club. I’ve met a lot of supercar owners just in the wild and at my work. A lot of them are into it for the status. Some can be passionate but very few will ever drive them that hard.

[mrandish]

My 80/20 was a broad simplification of a more nuanced landscape but I do think there's a real split, so I'll try to add one-click greater detail. While most people make any major purchase for multiple reasons, for the ~20% the status signaling seems to be the single most important factor. And it's not limited to their car choice. They're pretty aggressive in outwardly signaling status to everyone, including random strangers they don't know.

For the other ~80%, the primary motivation varies but it's not status (though that can be a secondary contributor for some). I'd estimate roughly half are car enthusiasts, split between those focused on driving performance and collectors who tend to own several supercars, sometimes rare limited editions. For those folks, projecting status can't be primary because at the race track everyone has a very expensive car and collectors can only drive one supercar at a time - so why bother with the hassle of garaging a collection no one ever sees?

I'm not sure exactly how to describe the other half but they aren't mainly car enthusiasts. I'd describe it more as being quality enthusiasts who appreciate having things which they personally feel are of uniquely high quality. Those things are usually expensive but they don't trust price as a reliable indication of 'unique quality' and they don't bother 'projecting' anything to others because they don't seem to care what others think.

For them It's about specific traits they find uniquely valuable - and it's not always things other people recognize as valuable. One McLaren owner give me a detailed exposition on how its unique one-piece carbon fiber monocoque delivers best-in-class torsional rigidity enabling incredibly precise tracking on low-speed corners. He said he enjoys it immensely as "an engineering object" yet he's never driven it over 85 mph and wouldn't know how to change the oil. Then he educated me about how his shirt was also an example of unusual quality, performance micro-materials and clever design. I asked him where I could get one and learned it's $20 at Costco. So, pretty clearly not focused on status projection. A lot of these folks are kind of 'stealth supercar owners'. A couple years after my wife got her McLaren, her sister visited from out of state and was shocked to be picked up in a McLaren at the airport. My wife had never mentioned it because she said her sister "isn't a car person." But the ~20% apparently manage to do more than enough signaling for the rest of us. I'm sure everyone they've ever met knows what car they have. :-)