My 80/20 was a broad simplification of a more nuanced landscape but I do think there's a real split, so I'll try to add one-click greater detail. While most people make any major purchase for multiple reasons, for the ~20% the status signaling seems to be the single most important factor. And it's not limited to their car choice. They're pretty aggressive in outwardly signaling status to everyone, including random strangers they don't know.
For the other ~80%, the primary motivation varies but it's not status (though that can be a secondary contributor for some). I'd estimate roughly half are car enthusiasts, split between those focused on driving performance and collectors who tend to own several supercars, sometimes rare limited editions. For those folks, projecting status can't be primary because at the race track everyone has a very expensive car and collectors can only drive one supercar at a time - so why bother with the hassle of garaging a collection no one ever sees?
I'm not sure exactly how to describe the other half but they aren't mainly car enthusiasts. I'd describe it more as being quality enthusiasts who appreciate having things which they personally feel are of uniquely high quality. Those things are usually expensive but they don't trust price as a reliable indication of 'unique quality' and they don't bother 'projecting' anything to others because they don't seem to care what others think.
For them It's about specific traits they find uniquely valuable - and it's not always things other people recognize as valuable. One McLaren owner give me a detailed exposition on how its unique one-piece carbon fiber monocoque delivers best-in-class torsional rigidity enabling incredibly precise tracking on low-speed corners. He said he enjoys it immensely as "an engineering object" yet he's never driven it over 85 mph and wouldn't know how to change the oil. Then he educated me about how his shirt was also an example of unusual quality, performance micro-materials and clever design. I asked him where I could get one and learned it's $20 at Costco. So, pretty clearly not focused on status projection. A lot of these folks are kind of 'stealth supercar owners'. A couple years after my wife got her McLaren, her sister visited from out of state and was shocked to be picked up in a McLaren at the airport. My wife had never mentioned it because she said her sister "isn't a car person." But the ~20% apparently manage to do more than enough signaling for the rest of us. I'm sure everyone they've ever met knows what car they have. :-)