Personal luxury cars

A personal luxury car is an American car classification describing a highly styled, mass produced, luxury vehicle with an emphasis on image over practicality. Effectively high priced Veblen goods, personal luxury cars favor style and perceived cachet while accenting the comfort and satisfaction of their owner and driver above all else. A high level of features and trim is offered, typically at the expense of passenger capacity, cargo room, and fuel economy. Characteristically built on a two-door platform with distinctive exteriors, they often share mechanical components in common with their manufacturers' popular mass market vehicles. As a result these vehicles were a profitable segment of the post-World War II automotive marketplace.

In the U.S., the four-seat 1958 Ford Thunderbird expanded the personal luxury car into a major market segment, according to most auto historians.

Personal luxury cars are characteristically two-door coupés or convertibles with two-passenger or 2+2 seating. They are distinguished on the performance end from GT and sports cars by their greater emphasis on comfort and convenience. Even though they usually contain higher horsepower engines and the necessary support systems for the higher horsepower output (transmissions, tires, brakes, steering, etc.); these larger power trains usually only bring these vehicles back to the power-to-weight ratios that they would have had if their gross vehicle weights had not been increased to accommodate the installation of their luxury features and accessories. On the luxury scale, by their appointments, features, and style, there is great variability within the market; however, this is not absolute but merely a general trend.

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