Stretching the analogy, something that gets you from point A to point B for a fraction of the price without the same level of comfort is totally fine for me. For some of my tasks, that means using local models. For others it might mean a frontier-last-year kind of model. That's totally acceptable most of the time. For anything else I guess it's like renting a truck to move; just get the right vehicle as needed and pay the premium.

A $50k car used 1,000 miles per month probably costs close to a thousand per month, assuming 200k miles of life. I imagine this is not unusual in the US.

Is it smarter to totally cheap out and have an unreliable car that breaks down, stranding you, causing you to miss work though? If you're in a line of work that's customer facing, where having a beater of a car is going to hurt your job prospects? Without knowing the rest of the context, absolute statements based on absolute numbers is also dumb.

How many months is this car loan? What was the down payment? What's the interest rate? We haven't even asked what kind of car it is yet.

I’m honestly just thinking about day to day utility in my personal life.