In short, you're not buying a car, but an experience.
Car please, nix the experience.
In that realm, that's what is selling. For example, there are magnificently engineered hypercars made, and they have to be to be sold... but not necessarily driven.
This is satire, but it's not to far off the mark. The people who are buying an experience are buying an experience in which they are the stars.
Despite being a road-going distillation of the company’s vast technical expertise and know-how in aerodynamics and powertrains, the billionaire was chomping at the bit to completely ignore all of that and put it in a big, dark storage room for two decades.
'Twas ever thus. Look at the patronage of the arts by the oligarchs and Emperors of the Renaissance.
This is armour made by Negroli. Obviously it was never used in battle and the man commissioning it never believed that he would use it that way. That was the case with the art commissioned by the Borgias
et al. Even, or especially now, art is both a means of displaying wealth or a way of putting capital away from prying authorities, laundering it, and then channeling it into your next scheme. That's why a banana duct-taped to a wall fetches millions.
It's quite enlightening looking at the contracts between artists and their patrons in the Renaissance. They'll state how much various pigments will be used. Lapis lazuli, which gave a beautidil deep blue for example, was very expensive and as blue was associated with the Virgin Mary, a painting of her in a blue cloak would be especially prestigious. The contract would say that blue pigment had been paid for by the patron and the artist had better use it.
As JayEmm says, but put more politely, Jaguar wanted to make good cars but its market wanted toys and status symbols.
Yes, we common folk think that a car should be beautiful, practical, fun to drive, and all that. The super-rich see everything as either a toy, a statement, an investment, or all three - but none of the things that you or I think it should be.
The rich are different - F Scott Fitzgerald
Ironically - and appropriately - we remember the artists today. Who cares what cardinal paid for it? Well, back then, the artists did.