You’ve identified one of the reasons for having nice cars, which is the relative low cost of the car as compared to buying the licence. The others are that they

You’ve identified one of the reasons for having nice cars, which is the relative low cost of the car as compared to buying the licence. The others are that they are only paying about 50% of the cost of their cars (as the installments are deductible from gross income), they get subsidised diesel (hence the ludicrously overpowered v6 German engines when the rest of the world is running on Japanese hybrids), and most importantly they get to use the vehicle as their personal car when not working...