>belied by the differences of reliability and cost of ownership across brands.

But these differences are razor thin compared to consumer perceptions of them.

For every fanboy on Reddit screeching about muh million mile 4Runner he leased for 36k there's a fleet manager who just spent an afternoon reviewing records and crunching numbers before confirming that yes we are going to buy another round of Pacificas as our current ones hit the "old enough it's not the image we want to project" threshold.

Compare the lap times of boring commuter sedans and compacts to the "sporty" and "good handling" sedans and compacts if you really want to see slim differences.