What makes a luxury car these days?

Well, the W206 info is already out there, and is even further above non-luxury cars like Teslas. In addition to under-the-skin structural and less visible huge improvements there are also easily visible new additions like:

Rear wheel steering (I mistakenly wrote somewhere that C Class doesn't have it, but it does!), massage seats, double glazing (already in W205 but now I believe can possibly be had with windscreen heating?), the new digital lights with projection function, automatic trailer steering, etc. etc.

I personally will not be interested in buying one because of the horrible failure of a user interface: them copying Tesla's centre screen was the wrong move and their steering wheel controls have taken a step in the wrong direction with the touch-buttons instead of real buttons.
Even thought Alfa Giulia doesn't have all of the newest toys the Mercedes has, it has the important ones and is far better in driving dynamics, ergonomics, and styling. It also isn't 20% Chinese-owned like Mercedes (possibly more through other indirect ownership), and Alfa isn't pushing the corrupt EV cultism quite as hard. Or maybe I'd go with some Maserati, they too have style, which is under-appreciated when people nowadays only talk about what basement-dwelling style-deficient bloggers talk about based on their non-existent experience and total lack of automotive industry knowledge based mostly on on-paper numbers or the few hours they spend behind the wheel at manufacturer-paid test-drive trips and them having to praise the manufacturer in order to keep the invites coming.

/r/cars Thread Parent