I hear you. I actually would love to build a nice car model, but the guys at Squir for example, who are experts in this area and make hundreds every year, put in 40 to 50 hours for a quality vehicle model. And they know what they're doing!
I can't make money with a deadline of 3 days to animate something. Just not practical in a normal pipeline when I'm doing all the After Effects work, mixing the audio, doing any animations. The $75 – $150 is well worth it for me.
By the way, that is a very interesting article on 3D modeling and reflections. Another reason to let an "expert" do it for me.