Today, even basic trim levels are downright loaded compared to what counted as standard equipment for the cars of twenty years ago, and the comparison only becomes more dramatic the farther back in time you go. Features that once defined luxury are simply expected today; air conditioning certainly comes to mind, and power windows.
And if you’re shopping for a bonafide luxury car in 2025, the scope of technological luxuries as well as paints and coverings and conveniences is truly staggering. Multi-mode massaging seats, custom interior lighting, ergonomic memory settings, voice-activated features … the list goes on and on.
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But what defines luxury to you? Certainly we can agree those massaging seats are nice, not to mention the ability to warm one’s hams via electrical filaments beneath the leather (real or animal-friendly), or come summertime, blast said hams with cooled air. But as Autopians, I’m confident we all have some unique takes on what constitutes luxury beyond the usual niceties.
As a serial shitbox owner for many years, I still count “starts every time” and “is safe” as highly valued luxuries. I’ve also suffered many a crap stereo – factory and aftermarket – so a nice sound system is clutch. And a power rear hatch? Absolutely delightful.
Your turn: What is luxury for you?
Top image: Doug DeMuro/YouTube
Reliable, simple, durable (and feels it), cheap to fix with minimal required maintenance, comfortable seats in a cabin that isn’t cramped, and a ride like a hovercraft (hopefully with at least a little better handling). No unnecessary electronic BS—including alerts unless something is truly an emergency that isn’t completely obvious—and any of that obnoxiously obtrusive active safety crap. Real switches and knobs of good quality that are a tactile delight to use, at least a reasonably quiet interior, and actual f’n windows with good sight lines. Basically, something that is designed to be very low stress, so pretty much the opposite of what’s on the market today.
Reliability is the most important luxury IMO, but I also highly value smooth/quietness and effortlessness.
If I can hear the engine, I want it to make a pleasant sound too. I’ve traveled in so many cars from “luxury” brands here in the UK that are powered by 4 cylinder diesel engines, and the engine sound totally ruins the experience.
The most luxurious feature of the car is definately the exterior – Where it should be 26.5ºC with a light breeze coming off the water. If a removable cooler full of ice and refreshments were available that would be ideal.
Not on fire or at the very least no more than small, readily contained fires.
The 4.6 in the explorer has a point. Pulls highway speeds from a stop at 800rpm, but only notice the shifter is the wrong gear because 5k rpm has too much throttle response, where lesser cars thrash or yell about that rpm.
Gt350 5.2 can’t say that as it was loud at all rpm and hated below 4k rpm or so.
Funnily enough it’s features our basic Chevy Bolt has, heated seats and steering wheel, keyless entry on the door handles, remote preconditioning, decent stereo, smooth ride. What it lacks is a comfier seat, maybe massaging even, power lift gate too, and a little more legroom.
I have a Bolt and agree, although the seats fit my body really well. I also have both packages of collision avoidance features, and they work well (I think…no crashes so far) without being annoying. The car is safe, cozy (preheated seats and steering wheel are heaven on a cold day), tranquil, and an absolute pleasure to drive, which is all the luxury I care about. Unless truly fast charging is a luxury, in which case…
Yeah there’s times I’m cruising down the road in it, and for a compact sized EV it just strikes me as really smooth and quiet. And just things like the unlock buttons on the handles, we hardly touch our key fobs except to use the remote start, and then have the auto-lock set so just walk away and it auto-locks. Spoils us for our other car we have to use the fob for.
Luxury isn’t about features. It’s about effortlessness. It might well be feature-packed, but it has to be unintrusive and easy to use. It should take no effort. The ride should take no effort to enjoy.
Some say time is the ultimate luxury, but in this context it’s effortlessness.
Real Luxury:
Smooth, silent operation and ridePlentiful power with high energy efficiencySimplicity and ease of use for all driving activities and non-propulsion amenities with control interfaces that require minimal to zero learning curveSensible instrumentation that provides all the necessary information in an easy to read formatAbsolute reliability with minimal & low-cost maintenanceExcellent visibility & safety featuresComfortable & supportive seating Generous storage and luggage spaceSmartphone Integration that ALWAYS worksBumpers that aren’t damaged in low-speed bumps & scrapes.Real wood trimLeather and/or Wool seatsWool CarpetsActual colors for interiors and paints that do not cost an arm and a leg on top of the price of the car, and are varied enough that you are unlikely to see an exact duplicate of your car everywhere you go.Impeccable build qualityTimeless designA choice of body styles – Sedan, Coupe, Wagon and Convertible.
For me, this means the efficiency & performance of a Lucid, the ability to customize that Bentley provides, and the build quality, ergonomics, durability and bumpers of a Mercedes-Benz W126 S Class, with the maintenance needs and reliability of the phone in your pocket.
Luxury is about ride and options for me. It should feel like riding a cloud while sitting in on a couch.
Today mostly the go for sport and reduce ride quality and the like
My son had a beautiful 2002 Toyota Avalon XLS with bench seat/column shift.That car to me was all the luxury anyone needs without the excessive electronics in modern cars.
Quality, reliability, comfort.
Air con and cruise control.
Most Toyotas are luxury for me. Why? It costs very little to work on, and they’re generally easy to work on. That way I have extra money to reupholster my recliner in fine corinthian leather.
For me:
Real wood trim,
Real leather seats,
Quiet, particularly no crashing or rattling over bumps,
Reasonably smooth ride,
‘Timeless’, rather than ‘trendy’ style
Good visibility,
Auto climate control,
Remote start and push-button start
Oh, and rock-solid, buttoned-down, straight as an arrow tracking on the highway. Typically a strong point for German cars. If I can get out of the car after a long drive and not feel exhausted, that’s also luxury.
Techy features do nothing for me, and only make me think about how outdated my car is going to feel in a few years.
As a former 1990 Cadillac Brougham owner, I contend that car was super luxury. There’s nothing like it for a road trip.
Damn I miss that car.
Dad’s 1990 Lincoln Town Car was the same. Felt you could just drive for days in that thing. It had the “new” body style so modern flush glass with no wind noise.
Real leather seats ( not PleatheretteTek ). And an interior that’s not black. Also, awesome stereo.
Long distance comfort. To be fully honest my Camry is more relaxing/pleasing to drive than my older Acura MDX. More comfortable seat and it tracks better.
A trunk with gas struts that don’t drop the lid on my head would be positively opulent.
The older I get the more I find dead nuts reliability to be luxury. I’d rather not have flashy features that never work right. Not having to go back for service over quality issues is worth more than anything else.
Personally, the biggest luxury feature a car can have is the ability to beat the crap out of it and not care. A close, and related, second is durability and lack of maintenance. About the only more normal features that I care about are a comfortable heated seat, headroom for 6’5″, and a heated steering wheel. Direct foot heating would also be great.
I would really enjoy having a car that had zero maintenance other than tires and things like washer fluid for 200k miles, and would stand up easily not only to me being an idiot, but also my 4 year old being destructive.
My wife’s F150 has every option money can buy, and she deserves it. Me? I’ve been fixing cars since 1971.. As long as the defroster works, I’m good to go!
Luxury to me means something is better than it practically needs to be. An extravagance. My Truck with heated leatherette seats and heated steering wheel is a luxury (at least those parts).
Chauffer!
Assuredness, isolation, and the sense the vehicle will outlast the dealership you bought it from. When I think of luxury I don’t think of gizmos and extra complexities, I was to get into a car that feels like the engineers had the final say over the accountants. The assuredness that everything was designed as the engineers wanted it, the feel of every button press and toggle switch was designed to feel excellent and never be replaced. With the chassis designed to isolate you so well from the road you forget you’re driving. Bumps, cracks, 40mph headwind, all deflected away from your senses which allows you to cruise in serenity. And of course bank vault levels of overbuilt to ensure you can drive your car into oblivion with only basic maintenance, as a car that beaks down is distressing leaves you with a sense of distrust. If I’m getting something that’s truly luxury, I never want to think about if it’ll start, if that’s my oil on the blacktop, or what that weird noise is. Luxury is something you can trust like a best friend who will help you move the next day when you message them at 11:45PM. Does such a car exist, potentially. I’ve yet to drive one but I would love to eventually own a W124 Mercedes turbo diesel as they seem like the closest vehicle to my idealized vehicle.
Luxury: A Condition of great ease and comfort.
Folks, I don’t expect many of you to know what’s involved with taking a wife and kids on a vacation 700 miles away, but it can be an absolute nightmare. Seat comfort, vehicle behavior at 75mph through the Appalachian mountains, fuel range, keeping the kids entertained, keeping the vehicle clean, having space for everything, having a simple to use navigation set up, there are lots of things that go into making the 11-12 hour-each-way trek pleasant or shitty.
It was on one of these family vacations that I realized there is no more luxurious vehicle on the planet than a Chrysler Ass Pacifica.
Good nav. Good tunes. Comfy seats. Room for the kids. Cupholders. Netflix and Disney+ on the TV’s. Perfect visibility. Rides and Handles like a dream at 80 mph. The space under the 2nd row will swallow the same amount of cargo as some cars can hold in their entire trunks. Onboard vacuum cleaner. Completely invisible to enthusiatic state troopers. 25 mpg loaded to the gills with shit.
Ease. And. Comfort.
I know exactly what you are talking about here. We have driven our Pacifica from Asheville,NC to Chicago, Orlando, the UP and other places.
It is a comfortable cruiser.
We also had a trip to DC in a Wagoneer as a rental, and a trip to Cincinnati in an Expedition. Those were a little more comfortable, but definitely not as efficient.
More generally, a bunch of the luxury features really don’t do that much for the experience for me. If it checks the boxes above, I have a hard time justifying paying more for additional features.
I’m so glad people sleep on these things, because they are no less reliable than an Odyssey and FAR more reliable than a Carnival, and they’re cheaper than both of those by thousands year for year and car for car. Prices are finally dropping into the low teens for very nicely set up vans, and its a whole new world for people.
That 3 row-seats for 12-15k price range is a minefield of either notoriously unreliable SUVs (Traverse, Explorer, Pathfinder, Kia/Hyundai stuff, or Honda Pilots And Highlanders with so many miles they can’t be financed.
Mom and pops show up with a 250 dollar a month budget and you toss them the keys for a low mile Pacifica with leather and heated seats and TV’s, you’ve got an instant car deal and customers for life.
Have had 2 as rentals and overall agree. Drove a rental Voyager on a 13 hr round trip with 7 and we liked it.
Completely agree but for the speeding. On my own recent Pacifica road trip I got a trip average of 32 mpg on 85/87 octane sticking to the posted speed limits and just waived hello to the state troopers as I passed by.
Right now luxury would be some damn seat heaters. It’s January, and neither of the family vehicles have them.
But I guess luxury is relative, and while I would consider those seat heaters a luxury, they do not make the entire vehicle luxury. If that makes any sense. I would echo others below, the combo of craftsmanship, reliability, specialness and customer service are what I would want in a vehicle that I would consider luxurious.
Before my Accord was taken out by a deer last Thanksgiving, the average age of my fleet of four cars was 36 years. We replaced that with a new CR-V with heated seats and remote start. It has changed my quality of life in ways I still cannot describe.