Opinion: a cheap, used Fiat Panda is more luxurious than an expensive new ‘luxury’ car

We are obsessed with luxury. We crave luxury hotels with goose down pillows. If we’re lucky perhaps we can splash out on a luxury watch. Our face wash is luxury. We can barely survive without quilted and luxurious toilet roll.

Car manufacturers are similarly afflicted. Many of them aren’t car manufacturers at all, they say, but ‘luxury brands’. A loose concept that nobody can really explain without descending into pretentious expressions that string together a load of alluring sounding words but don’t actually mean anything. I’ve lost count of the number of presentations I’ve sat through telling me about target customers who all wear Gucci loafers and spend their days sipping cocktails while planning their next philanthropic endeavour.