Perhaps the 95% in your situation would be more like getting a smaller car instead of, e.g. a minivan? I'm not saying you own a minivan, just that his general advice is not "don't get a car," it's don't get a car that based on some vision of what you want to do with it that only ends up actually happening 5% of the time. The insight is that it's usually cheaper to rent for the long tail use cases than to buy outright and leave idle for the vast majority of the time.
Many minivans are less expensive than many small cars. I do think there's a good life hack here of "don't spend a lot of money on a car" but I'm not sure it says much about the type of car.
Right, you have to pick the dimension of comparison to matter to you. Maybe the extreme case is getting a sports car that you only get to drive on the track once every couple months instead of a cheaper workhorse vehicle you'd use every day.
