I think we've had this conversation on here several times before (someone talking about "cash is king")...
As others have said, its all about working out how its most cost effective to drive the car you want (and then obviously seeing if its affordable to do so).
Even if you had big piles of cash lying around, its only worth spending your capital if its not performing better where you have it vs the cost of borrowing money for whatever thing you desire/need next.
When you are talking the amounts for cars, its perfectly possible that you could have your savings performing better than spending it on a steeply depreciating asset like a car.
I used to have this discussion with my parents who were always "borrowing is a sin"... its a very old fashioned moral point of view and doesn't make sense when you are trying to get the most out of whatever money you have.
I'm not quite as clever as MonkeyHanger when it comes to this stuff, but I do lay out all my options for maximum performance.