Dodge Challenger Forums - What characteristics defines a car as a luxury car

I was thinking about this and I come up with a question mark. What do you think defines a car as a luxury car? Many times I saw the 300M and LHS is being listed as being just a full-sized or large car, other times I saw "Near-Luxury." When the 300M was compared it was compared against cars such as the Catera, Lincoln LS, Aurora, Grand Prix GTP, Volkswagen Passat, Saab 9-5, Lexus ES300. Now just about every vehicle except possibly the Aurora were smaller than the 300M, my question is what defining characteristics was it lacking which prevented it from being seen as a competitor to those that were closer in its size class such as the Mercedes E-Class or S-Class, Cadillac Seville, Lincoln Continental, BMW 5-series or 7-series.

With Chrysler's current offering of the 300 series it has been compared against the Crown Victoria, Five Hundred/Taurus, Montego/Sable, Pontiac Bonneville GXP, Buick LaCrosse, Buick Lucerne, Toyota Avalon, etc. The only luxury cars I have ever read the 300 series being compared against are the Cadillac CTS-V and Cadillac STS-V and that was to see which was faster between those cars and the 300C SRT-8. I guess the question I'm asking is why doesn't the 300C model get compared against middle level powered larger luxury sedans like the Cadillac STS V8, Mercedes E-Class, BMW 5-series, Infinity M-class, other any Luxury car that it has closer similarities with than the ones listed earlier. I don't see how a bunch of cars that either feature older to competitive V6s or very outdated V8s that lack the option of AWD, similarly powered V8s, and a real performance model can actually compare against the 300 series.

So in a nutshell, what is Chrysler lacking to compete against these luxury competiors? Is it the pricing or is it the base models (this applies to the 300 series and not the 300M)? If not, what option does Chrysler not offer in the current 300 series and also lacked in the 300M that prevents them from being seen as a true luxury car?