It's necessary to make a distinction between cornering's practical importance to us versus its potency as an advertising issue.
This is especially true at the top of the line.  Hardly anybody seems to offer just a luxury car anymore.  They all need to be "sport-luxury," even the newer Cadillacs and Lincolns.  But considering the time and effort it takes most of us just to find an American road where we can enjoy a car's handling, we should realize that when we talk cornering, we really mean something other than suitability to our practical driving requirements.

Just what might this be?

Well, as we watch the relentless strenuousness with which today's television commercials depict luxury cars whizzing up hills and hurtling around hairpin turns, we need to bear in mind that graying baby boomers have become these cars' prime customers--and that men in this group tend to share concerns about physical self-image and related issues of "male menopause."  Wouldn't a clever advertiser want to play on rejection of the "fat cars" we associate with our fathers in their dull and paunchy middle age, in favor of cars that project lean athleticism and inexhaustible vigor?

Perhaps this is all in the natural order of things.  Perhaps the only truly discordant note is our persistence in believing that today we are sophisticated consumers, and above the kinds of psychological marketing gimmicks that our fathers fell for.