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What are the advantages of luxury car brands like Acura/Lexus over their sibling non-luxury brands Honda/Toyota?

This is a site about 'Personal finance and money'. The only relevant aspects in that question seem to be justify the higher price and does it save money? But both the question and the current answers discuss a lot of other aspects, many opinion based.

IMO These parts all need a good cleanup to keep focus on the financial aspects. It does not help that the OP already started with the title 'What are the advantages' ;-)
This invites very broad answers.

Should we edit out irrelevant parts?

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  • That question is a good complement to money.stackexchange.com/q/43967/5458
    – Ben Voigt
    May 6, 2019 at 1:32
  • My question meant, how to justify the higher price of luxury cars in comparison to their counterpart and when test driving these vehicle what specifically to look for.
    – riya
    May 9, 2019 at 8:34
  • @riya Then edit your question to ask exactly that. Subsequently we may be able to edit other answers as well so that it becomes a financial question. I have started downvoting answers that do not address financial aspects.
    – user71981
    May 10, 2019 at 18:58

3 Answers 3

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I voted to leave this question open the first time through the close vote queue. (It's in the queue again with 3 votes to close.)

I don't love the question, so I didn't answer, but I do think it's a personal finance topic. The fact that it hit HNQ means there is a lot of interest in the topic. It's true that there is a strong element of opinion; that's also true of a lot of good questions here.

How should I track my budget?

What works for me doesn't work for everyone. Tracking my spending to the penny has a cost associated with it. I happen to think it saves me money by informing my spending and helping me make rational decisions.

That is a primarily opinion-based question/answer pair that is absolutely on-topic here.

Vehicle purchases and home purchases are some of the biggest financial decisions most readers here will make, so I think it deserves some leeway.

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    Nice answer. I was thinking how to respond if a member asked where we draw the line, would a question about choosing a TV be ontopic? And you gave the answer, the magnitude of the car purchase makes it still gray, but still ok to keep here. May 7, 2019 at 0:10
  • My question meant, how to justify the higher price of luxury cars in comparison to their counterpart and when test driving these vehicle what specifically to look for.
    – riya
    May 9, 2019 at 8:34
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I can't speak for the other mods, so this is my opinion.

Questions that are off topic can be voted up, and hit HNQ (hot network questions, for the acronym challenged) skewing the voting faster and higher. That said, I agree this question was borderline, likely off-topic. Since I do not get a 'vote', only a binary ignore/close, I didn't act on it when it was first posted. What I was assuming is that if there was agreement, if members agreed it was off topic, it would be voted closed. It appears to have hit the review queue, and 3 high rep members voted to leave open.

The question itself causes little harm. The harm if any, is from -

  • The implication other similar question will be permitted.
  • The expectation of that point by those drawn here from HNQ.
  • The crazy way comments went right to personal insults. So needing more real mod efforts than usual.

Yes, editing out opinion, and keeping facts is most helpful.

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    as another mod, I agree with this May 4, 2019 at 21:39
  • My question meant, how to justify the higher price of luxury cars in comparison to their counterpart and when test driving these vehicle what specifically to look for.
    – riya
    May 9, 2019 at 8:34
  • @riya I think “what specifically to look for” pushes it off-topic for Money.SE.
    – Lawrence
    May 19, 2019 at 12:06
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I think this is clearly not on topic. The test is primarily, would an expert in personal finance be an expert on this question? And in that it clearly fails: expertise in personal finance likely makes you worse at answering this question if anything, as it makes you more likely to buy an intelligent car rather than a luxury car.

The expertise to answer a question about "what a luxury car has over regular cars" is that of a car expert, not a finance expert, and so it is off topic here.

It's not that it's opinion - on a car site, that question would be totally fine, in my opinion. It is the topicality itself, not the opinion, that makes it inappropriate for this site.

Now, I think a question like, "Can you save money buying a well-built, more expensive, new car, rather than a cheaper brand or used car", that's fine because it addresses the personal finance aspect. But "what is the advantage of a luxury car" does not.


Edit: I want to specifically address what the OP of that question meant, given their comments in this thread.

My question meant, how to justify the higher price of luxury cars in comparison to their counterpart and when test driving these vehicle what specifically to look for.

Taking that in pieces:

how to justify the higher price of luxury cars

This is the part that is clearly opinion, and doesn't really fit on the site, though I think we've had questions in this vein before. By itself it might be an okay question, but the answer is really simple - because people like nice things, and sometimes the point of having money is to have those nice things. The detail beyond that - what's in luxury cars in particular that makes them nice and worth buying - isn't on topic here.

in comparison to their counterpart

This is where we head into automotive and not into finance.

when test driving these vehicle what specifically to look for.

And this is definitely automotive. This is great on an automotive site (the OP of this meta question suggested one, I believe, though I can't speak for that site's topic area). It's just not a finance question - it's something where you need to know things about cars to answer.

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