$40k all said and done is a hell of a lot of money. I needed the toy car to be no more than 30% of my yearly income to be "affordable", since I support a family of 5 (+dog, +cat) on my income - which means I had to wait until age 40 to replace my Camaro SS. My wife plans to start a career in the next few years (she never worked-married me instead) - at least a part time hobby job - but her making $20-50k per year, over 10-20 years makes a huge difference on the bottom line (her income could nearly pay for 3 kids to go to college), so her going back to work is the main justification I have for spending this much on a car. Also, given my professional position I can expect solid income growth - again it took me to age 40 to get solid confidence in long term employment and income growth. I am suprised that so many under age 30 will spend this much money on a car - it seems affordable to young people because they have no real expenses yet - such as a family or household - and at this age you are not very well established in life. I hope you under 30's have very good educations, master's degrees in business, law, medicine, or science. The wonderous economic growth of the 80's and 90's may not continue, if not opportunities will be limited, the professional world is becomming more competetive every year. My company (world class engineering/technology) will only look at the top 1% of students from ONLY the top universities, and most new hires have master's or PhD's and do at least a 1 year internship before graduation to prove their worth. That will get you a $65k starting salary.
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