SciFrog:
MKSGR:
SciFrog:
MKSGR:
SciFrog:
noone1:
MKSGR:
SciFrog:

Buying a $250k car when you make $300k a year seems like a really bad idea...

You are safe to assume that most buyers of these cars are less wealthy / have lower income than one would expect... Most people with money have no interest in exotic cars (in a sense they would get one or even several). Buyers are mostly younger freaks, many of them spending a disproportional share of their wealth / income on cars.

One should not forget that cars (even high-priced ones) are "cheap" compared to really expensive things... Thus they are no real sign of wealth, although this may sound strange.

Highly disagree. You need high income to even get financing, let alone to have $300K in cash just laying around to blow on a car. I'd be willing to bet the average income of most McLaren and modern exotics as easily above $250K.

IMHO anyone making less than a couple of million $ and buying a $250k car should have their head checked...

In this case, most high-value car brands would be bankrupt Smiley Did you check how many people in the US make >2m US$ per year? How many even consider a high-performance sports car? See the problem Smiley

There are plenty of families making over $1m a year... it's the USA, not France 

There is a big difference between an annual income of 1m and 2m Smiley There are approx. 250.000 people in the US in the 1m+ bracket (based on IRS data). 5m+ is approx 10% of that (that is: 25.000 people) , so 2m+ should be somewhere in between. Most of these people are not interested in owning one or even several flashy high-performance sportscars, though Smiley

Top 1% is $779k per year, top 0.1% is $3.9m a year, your numbers are basically correct but still somewhat under (source CNBC article dated today, I am assuming that % is based on number of tax returns). 

I stand by my writing that there is a lot of people making $1m a year in the USA in the context of our sport cars market discussion.

Income data is skewed because many privately held businesses are incorporated as S corporation, partnerships, or limited liability corporations; therefore, corporate income, not individual take home income, is passed through and taxed at individual income tax rates.  Often, the corporate income remains on the balance sheet of the entity as cash and retained net income.  This over-inflates the disposal income of that taxpayer.  Furthermore, on the sale of the business, the proceeds are recognized as non-recurring personal income.