[matthewowen]

IME it's a big part of it for a lot of people. People don't buy a car for what they do with it every day, they buy it for what they do with it a few times a year. If you have a boat on a trailer, you buy a vehicle that can pull the trailer. If you drive to the mountains in winter a few times a year, you buy a higher clearance AWD vehicle so that you can skip chain control.

You might say that this irrational and that people might be better off renting something on the occasion that they need to tow something, or go on a long road trip, or fit more than five people in their car. But people are irrational and they really do make these choices!

[adwn]

In addition, renting a large car for a few days is really expensive. If you have to do this 5-10 times a year, over 10 years of ownership, I'm not so sure that buying small and renting large make sense financially. Not to mention the inconvenience and loss of flexibility from having to collect and drop off a rental car, which typically isn't exactly right around the corner, especially in rural areas.