Assuming this is not NYC: how many of the people in the group you're describing drive reliable, used cars that they own outright, and how many lease new? I think I know which, and if so, it would go a long way towards characterizing their mindset.

I think it's a status play, for people who have been convinced that status is tantamount to utility. If you lower yourself to options that aren't well-known to be high status, or at least known - particularly ones that require tinkering of any sort - you are wasting time, and worse, you are signalling to other people that you're a time-waster, that your time isn't valuable, and that your choice to waste time rather than use the default or high-status option shows that you have a defect in judgment.

Many years ago I installed Firefox 0.6 on my mother-in-law’s laptop and gave it the IE logo - she never noticed, it never got updated, but she never had any malware problems.