> it's your most important and powerful symbol of autonomy, wealth, and personal liberty
Cars as virtue signaling? I'm not quite sympathetic to this case. This person's liberty is causing harm to everyone else and I don't care for their symbol of wealth. I'd like to say, "get off my lawn", were the lawn is actually my city. My liberty of not being polluted by noise and fine particles, and of easily and safely moving on as a pedestrian or biker, and of my earth's climate not being harmed is important as well.
People could have their cars outside the city, reachable with good public transport, so it's not even like they couldn't have their symbol of wealth somewhere.
It would also make sense that people don't have their personal cars in cities. We could have car sharing systems like we have for city bikes, which work great. Most cars sleep most of the times, this doesn't make quite sense. We could have fewer cars achieving the same usefulness with better a organization less focused on the individuals.
Maybe a solution is that the car stops being seen as a symbol of wealth and liberty, and more like a liability / necessary evil, because this also doesn't make sense.
Wanting to look wealthy is already a cursed concept. Why should anyone care that anyone looks wealthy? This is not what's important in life. What you think and what you do matters much more.
Of course, this is a very good point, and this needs to be addressed. To be clear, I'm not arguing with you, I'm agreeing.