Ugly looking thing in my opinion. I don't see what the big deal is about thinness , but weight is everything for some people.
I think the car analogy is pretty fair though - people pay thousands, even tens of thousands extra for cars that essentially do things marginally better than cheaper alternatives. I bought a 6 cylinder model over the four cylinder - you can argue that there was some sort of numerical "performance" advantage, but that would only be true if I was racing - just like the performance of a laptop, 99% of the time it's unused while you type, read email, browse the internet, watch video a celeron and integrated graphics could handle. How many gamers buy hardware partly for image?
Maybe a better analogy is buying a new car over a used - thousands wasted on image or feel. I've bought new cars - it felt great, smelled great, I loved it. Huge waste of money in retrospect.
A final thought, now that advances in computing power for most users are increasingly unnecessary, style is creeping back in as a marketing tool. "Ugh, is that last fall's laptop you're wearing?" And when are flexible displays and fuel cell batteries coming??!!