They risk losing money if they offer too many standard features because customers will no longer have an incentive to spend more. Alternatively, they risk losing a sale to a competitor if they try charging extra for everything.

In the economy car segment, the balance normally tilts towards perceived value for the money. In the luxury car segment, the balance tends to tilt towards optional extras. To put it all into perspective, we’ve looked at the most and least expensive variants of 15 cars and ranked our list in ascending order. Note the price figures we provide correspond to 2018-model year vehicles on the American market.