Weird question: do you ever consider a car you have to finance to be affordable?

What I mean by that is if you do not have the money up-front to buy the car, is it affordable?

I know that obviously there is the opportunity cost of cash, but that would apply under what I have said: you would have the $40,000 to buy a $40,000 car, but you’d take out a loan at a low rate (like 2%) and keep your $40,000 invested. But in that case, if you didn’t have the $40,000 (after retirement savings, house savings, child education savings, emergency savings, etc.), would you still take out a loan? Even at 2%?

Wouldn’t the right financial decision be to save up $40,000 invested and then buy the car once you have that $40,000 saved? You’d reach $40,000 sooner and you’d still have that capital to grow while you divert that savings to the loan payment.

It seems like a lot of people buy cars on loans, and I can’t seem to reason about the math surrounding it. I’m a car enthusiast with a reasonably high income and no debt or obligations, but I am having a really hard time seeing any way I could possibly justify a car loan at all, even using the 20/4/10 rule or similar. It seems absurd to take out a loan if I could just save up the money for it. I would get nothing out of it except to maybe get the car a few years earlier. If I couldn’t save the money up for it by making the “payments” into my savings, wouldn’t that be a huge red flag indicator that I definitely couldn’t afford the payments PLUS interest?

According to the 20/4/10 rule using about $300 per month as cost-to-operate, my income should afford a $65,000 car, but that seems absurdly high.
According to auto financing based on DTI, and using a loan term of 72 months, I could “afford” the payments on a $345,000 vehicle. At 96 months, I could “afford” a $460,000 vehicle. A vast, vast difference from my personal maximum affordable purchase price of $40,000, or the rule’s maximum price of $65,000.
Is this DTI rule accurate? Are people making $60,000 a year going in to get loans for like $80,000, $100,000 or more? Are they getting approved? That seems like it can’t be true.

What math are people doing to ensure they don’t bankrupt themselves when they take out a car loan, if they even do at all? How do you know what your purchase price budget is as a car enthusiast, especially with such a vast difference between a reasonable rule and the apparent maximum? How do you deal with the thousands or tens of thousands lost to deprecation + loan interest? Do you personally only buy under what you have saved beyond the base savings mentioned above? Do you use a different rule than 20/4/10?