Car modelers are price sensitive. They always have been, and likely always will be. However, there are some car modelers who will buy kits by the case, or at least will buy a few of the same kit because there may be multiple ways the builder wants to create the finished kit.
The difference between car modelers and the military modelers from what I have seen is that the military modelers will build one of a kit and then move on. For example, they will build one Abrams tank, one F-15, and generally, they will not buy another of these kits. The "creative license" is not with military kits the way it is with cars. So their expectations are set higher because there is likely only one way to represent the kit. The military modeler who paints his tank Panther Pink or Candy Apple Orange would likely rue the day he showed the finished model to his fellow military modelling friends. There may very well be a serious debate as to whether we should once again permit public floggings.
My dad has always built models in the military genre and he was (and still is) very fiddly with the details of these kits. When I was quite young, I made the wisecrack of painting one of his military kits a typical car color. The way he looked at me after I made that suggestion, I really thought I was going to be put up for adoption for a few seconds.