> as soon as you finish paying it off, it's basically EOL

The average age of a car on the road in the US today is now more than 11 years. The average new car loan is just less than 6 years. Beyond that, it's all just a different set of trade-offs. Aside from living somewhere truly dense with fantastic public transit and only going places reachable by said transit, owning a car means less time spent on transportation, and infinitely more flexibility on where you go. Lots of people prefer the lifestyle. Even in Europe cars remain quite popular.