To be fair there are plenty of people who, not having any strong feelings about a consumer item and limited interest in studying the entire lore and history of a wanted item, simply rely on buying the best / most expensive item. Not a bad strategy really. They could do far worse and chances are that if enough people believe Cadillac / Mercedes / Dunhill / whatever is perceived as being “best” - whatever that means - then it’s safe to say it will probably be satisfactory to them. Meh, seems a decent way to roll I guess. Personally, I find it satisfying to educate myself and to make my own choices for my own reasons, but if I needed or wanted to get into some new gear and my time / attention span were precious to me I’d spend the money and rely on statistics to guide my purchases. Actually, I’ve done exactly this buying a new car once. Needed a good car immediately and had way bigger issues to deal with than researching a new car in my very limited time, so I bought a loaded Buick that was well regarded and met all the requirements. Put 179k miles on it without any issues and the car was great. I gave less thought to that purchase than ordering a new pipe. I simply relied on the collective reviews of millions of satisfied buyers and made sure it met all my must have options. Done and done. Didn’t want a Mercedes, just a reliable and affordable full-size sedan with a modicum of luxury. No regrets and not the way I normally go about car buying but I was in a hurry and had bigger fish to fry.
Edit: yeah, I know it wasn’t the “best” or a Cadillac but in my defense the Cadillacs were butt ugly that year and the local Buick dealer was great. Didn’t want a Mercedes because nobody locally would service them, otherwise I’d have bought one! The Lincoln dealer was a twat, so that was out. ?
