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
Pro Luxury is what I am a fan of.
https://www.hotrod.com/features/1983-cadillac-de-ville-pro-touring-ls-swap/
Luxury to me is found with:
Luxury to me is NOT:
My 2nd car had power windows and locks, and that was peak. Two years ago I got a Metris cargo van with Bluetooth and the ceiling was raised. A man of simple needs apparently.
Luxury to me is actually just synonymous with fit and finish, not whizz bang gizmos. Just comfort, good noise isolation, and an engine that doesn’t even feel like it’s trying.
A car that just feels like it is very well put together. That is more than simply using more expensive materials, that’s build quality. A serene ride quality like old school big cars used to have. Excellent outward visibility. Power that is at least more than adequate no matter how many cylinders comprise engine or if it’s an electric motor. Hearted and cooled seats. And of course, rich Corinthean Leather!
Engineering excess. Attention on how firm things like vents are, how buttons click, multiple SKUs for the same part just to hide a button, etc.
Sure, putting eletric motors on things, leather, wood or other premium finishings everywhere, huge screens, assistances, etc, all they count, but the sense that things are well built and cared really shines to me.
Pillow top seats, acres of fake wood harvested from vinyl trees, a buttery smooth ride, and numb steering.
Ah, old school American car land yacht luxury. I do appreciate I nice old school big car
To me luxury is that feeling you get when you approach the car, the vehicle detects the key fob and unlocks for you (door handles pop out ready for you to grab it and just open that door), you get in and the car starts by itself, no start stop button. Google Maps knows that you are headed home from work and the address is right there waiting for you to tap to confirm. The heated seats/steering wheel are on automatically and the heat is working right away. The car is very quiet and the suspension absorbs all the bumps. Your spotify has the last song you were playing in your phone at work so you continue with the beats. The perfect power to merge on the highway with no issues.
This is the description of the Equinox EV that just added to my fleet, and this is the basic LT model. Everything happens so fast and effortless, that’s luxury to me.
“Your turn: What is luxury for you?”
Soft Corinthian leather, obviously.
This is the correct answer, obviously.
Quiet, simple interior with no screens or too many buttons, less is more here, high quality, no leather seats.
Simple. Something that drives as nicely as possible and is as well built as it gets. Example: A W140 S-Class embraces luxury much more than an expensive premium crossover with all kinds of gadgets.
Luxury:
* Runs and drives well with nothing but basic maintenance
* Air conditioning
* Heated seats
* Large displacement, naturally aspirated engine
* Quiet
I’m a cheap date.
I’d like to add leather covered steering wheel and cloth seats to that list.
Can I interest you in old school wood steering wheels with the finger divots?
The Jatco Xtronic CVT. No shifting. No gears. Just the soothing drone of the pulleys and belts holding the engine at the right speed for the moment. That’s real luxury. People like white noise, right?
CVTs are the best choice for a basic daily driver/road tripper. Fight me.
As a Prius driver with a similar-in-usage-but-different-mechanically “eCVT”, I agree. I love the thing.
As someone who bought a Subaru to give my manual jeep a rest from daily miles, I agree.
When we bought our Outback, it had several things I didn’t want…boxer engine, AWD, CVT, big-ass touchscreen.
Now I actually like the CVT and touchscreen (especially after they updated the layout a couple of years ago). I wish the CVT didn’t have fake gears, but dammit is it nice and smooth and like a big warm hug on the interstate.
Got to admire your commitment to the bit!
Stellar outward visibility.
The new luxury.
I will miss when the 90’s metal is all gone. I have two 90s cars now, love how i can see out of them.
As far as the cars of 90s go I think some cars of the naughts/early teens compare quite favorably. Stylistically you can get cars with visibility, mechanically they are still DIY friendly with low parts costs and good availability (at least mine are). The cockpit has knobs/switches/sliders/buttons, the dash has a double DIN hole. And I think SS exhaust systems are more common on the newer cars. And stick shifts, while less common were still available on many cars, even sedans if that’s your thing.
One point in the latter vehicles favor is thanks to feature creep some of even the base cars have “luxury” features like automatic climate control, power everything, etc. Another is safety in the newer cars is much better with high strength steel being more common, better crash protection, more airbags, etc. Corrosion resistance? I dunno, where I live that’s not really an issue but the paint has held up better.
As far as the electronics adding complexity goes I had my share of issues with 90s cars too. My early 90’s Mazda 626 had an awful issue where it would randomly engage the hold on the transmission, sometimes several times a minute. I was never able to figure that out but if it had been equipped with OBD2 maybe I could have gotten a code. Being intermittent this problem was hard to replicate much less diagnose and fix. Some German cars had wiring that fell apart which was a complete nightmare.
If it was me between a 90’s car and something from 2000-2014 I’d probably go with the latter but it’d be case by case.
I’ve heard such great things about ventilated seats, but that’s only implemented with leather or leather-adjacent seats, right?
I’ve often wondered how I’d reconcile the lack of that kind of thing with the simple fact that my butt misses the plush cloth seats of my old conversion van. I don’t want leather, dammit.
On the other hand, on the east coast I rarely deal with 100°F weather, so I’m not really giving in much thought. But I would certainly call the feature “luxury”.
The fact is, I haven’t driven enough vehicles (and certainly not enough older vehicles) to have strong opinions. The most spartan vehicle I ever drove was probably my high school’s F-250 pickup, but barely enough to be in my memory. And I’d be just as likely to call any feature I don’t want a luxury (like a sunroof, for example).
So, I’m gonna cop out a bit and just say I hope for something like a Lexus where the (perceived or not) reliability is the luxury of not worrying about it breaking down so much.
Not gonna lie, I prefer nice cloth to leather damn near every time. Naturally cool in summer and warm in winter.
I miss mouse fur.
Given I’m most at home in spartan interiors with vinyl bench seats, crank windows, no AC, AM/FM radio, and barely working heat… my 3 counts as luxury to me. Heated seats and steering wheel, power windows and locks, AC, working heat, leather steering wheel and upholstery, wireless Android Auto (I added an adapter for it), and power seats with lumbar. It’s about as nice as I could ever want, especially since I’m considering rotary-swapping a kei car that will have just about none of that and daily driving it. That project is at least a few years away though. Time and space to work being the issues.
I enjoy my poverty spec cars because I have far less time than I used to for fixing things.
Wing windows.
At one point, I owned both a ’17 Hyundai Elantra and a ’19 Mercedes C Class. They were both perfectly adequate cars, with comparable infotainment and electronic features. What made the C Class “luxury” was comfortable seats on a road trip, quiet on the road, solid, but not harsh, ride, and power on demand.
My most recent two rental cars were an M-B A180 and a Nissan Sentra.
Obviously the A-class is a low-tier Benz product, but it’s still a pricey option compared to the Sentra. As you mention, the seats were comfortable, it handled well, felt solid, and the driving position was nice…but it rode like shit, was very noisy, and the user interface is far worse than any other I’ve encountered in a vehicle. I’ve found that the more ‘fancy’ a car is, the more shit there is beeping and complaining and distracting from the experience. Luxury for me is a decent car that moves me from A to B without bothering me too much.
Given that, I found the Sentra to be a better car overall…even if the MB were the cheaper option, I’d buy the Sentra, no hesitation.
I’ve got no experience with the a class, but I don’t doubt it’s as bad as you say. Benz is definitely trading on its reputation in many respects. My c class has been much better than that though.
Give me all the gadgets and gizmos and valves and solenoids, and make it perform as well as the bleeding edge of automotive technology will currently allow. If it breaks it will either be covered under warranty or I will fix it. Life is too short to drive dull cars. I have been given the gift of many tools and mechanical ability and armed with those two things I will drive whatever the fuck I want, expected reliability be damned.
Luxury in a car isn’t that hard: Materials, build quality, reliability, and simplicity.
Materials: real metal, wood, and maybe leather
Build quality: no creaks or rattles
Reliability: There should not be any common catastrophic failure points, 10+ years and 100k miles should be just broken in, not time to trade in.
Simplicity: Less to worry about, especially less features no one wants.
In today’s market a Camry is a much better luxury car than an S-class. Driving a modern Mercedes knowing just how many completely unnecessary electronic devices it has that are just waiting to fail is anything but luxury.
Lexus is probably the best luxury brand these days, but even they have a problem with unnecessary tech. Reducing the number of things that can fail is a good thing.
The ideal luxury car would be something like a ’70s Rolls with a quality EV powertrain and modern suspension and brakes (fear of losing your brakes AND your suspension because one line leaks is not luxury)
Honestly I’m pretty happy when everything on the car works properly, true luxury is not having to know “the tricks” to your vehicle.
Room to spread out. A soft bench seat, with no huge console constraining my legs, and a seat belt that won’t try to strangle me. Yes, yes, safety blah blah blah, but if I wanted to sit in a hard seat with a harness clamping down on me, I’d buy a roller coaster.
The new seatbelts that grab like a rapey octopus are completely ridiculous. And the damn giant consoles.
“The new seatbelts that grab like a rapey octopus are completely ridiculous”
I mean, its not my kink but I’m not gonna shame someone whose into that. So just out of curiosity which cars have that erm, “feature”?
Asking for a friend.
longevity, which of course is the absolute opposite of what most modern luxury cars seem to be aiming for
I’ll be honest, my idea of pure automotive luxury is my ’95 Miata. No, seriously, hear me out. This is a car that I bought for no reason other than to have something fun to drive on a nice day. I don’t need it whatsoever. I have a daily driver for work, or when it’s raining or when I need to get more at the store or Home Depot than will fit in an NA Miata’s tiny trunk. Being able to have a vehicle whose sole reason for being in my life is to provide me joy is better in my mind than all the massaging seats and 32-speaker audio systems in an average Dubai parking garage.
TLDR: The more effortless something is the more luxurious it is.
Examples:
Physical HVAC, Volume, Lighting, etc. controls.
For me as a single person and the only person who drives my cars: Manual seats, manual mirrors, manual locks, manual (crank) windows, etc. Basically anything that is set it and forget it.
Having to take my eyes off the road to go through several menus on a touchscreen is the opposite of luxury. “Luxury” cars with such ‘features’ are only luxurious if you are a passenger, kinda like how being a passenger in an LM002 is great, and driving it sucks horribly.
I’m not obsessed with saving time, but think of how much time you’ve spend messing with unnecessarily technophilic things that used to be better in their original form, it adds up quick.
There’s something special about having the right tool for the job, having vehicles that (mostly) stay fixed after you repair them, etc.
That Doug DeMuro 1980s Cadillac reminds as much of luxury as those 1980s Casio calculator watches. I spent a lot of time behind the wheel of a Mercedes 240D. Vinyl seats, manual sunroof (no sunroof on one of them), manual seats, crank up windows. Despite all of that, I grew to respect this luxury (economy) car. To make it a bit more “luxury”, I would probably specify a passenger side rearview mirror. Seats could be heated and cooled. Steering wheel heated. Change the 4 speed to a 6 speed and add a modern diesel with a tailpipe that won’t give my kids asthma.
I would not change the overall bones of that car though. I absolutely adored how I could fly down forest service roads in the Upper Pennisula and never hear a clunk and never bottom out. I loved the sound of the doors closing. I loved the vacuum actuated door locks. I loved the 700 mile range. Oddly, the modern 1/2 ton truck has morphed into the closest approximation of luxury that comes to mind for me these days.
Possibly the greatest car ever made
The W123 is almost positively the greatest car ever made.