Cars serve as a symbol of status throughout the narrative. The first car that appears in the novel is Camille’s Range Rover, which Aubrey drives around St. Francisville. Aubrey finds the luxury car unfamiliar: “I’ve never owned a car, and today will be the first time I’ve been in, much less driven, one as fancy as this. I can’t believe she’s trusting me with it” (62). Trust is a fragile concept in Anatomy of an Alibi, especially between Aubrey and Camille. Camille trusts Aubrey with her physical objects, the trappings of her wealth, but Camille holds the information she finds back from Aubrey to protect Silas. Camille exchanges the noticeable Range Rover for a less flashy car, noting, “I bought this beat-up Honda Accord with cash a few days ago, which felt like an extreme move at the time…But extreme or not, it’s exactly what I need to get me back to Baton Rouge undetected” (29). Camille sheds the visible elements of her socioeconomic status, slipping under the radar in a car that won’t attract the attention of Ben or anyone else she knows, making her unnoticeable. The fact she is able to buy it “with cash” for a mere temporary purpose, however, reinforces her socioeconomic status.

Ben himself views cars as status symbols. He makes sure that both he and Camille have matching Range Rovers, and he only buys an old Mustang to gain greater access to Aubrey and her friends. In the flashback chapters, Ben has contempt for Camille’s wealth, thinking, “And as much as she hates the power her father wields, she sure doesn’t hate what that money affords her. Tuition paid in full at Tulane, the little BMW she drives, credit cards with no limits...and an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe” (205). Ben specifically highlights the car that Camille drives in college in his listing of her assets, illustrating both his fixation on gaining the same wealth as Camille and the connection between cars and financial affluence.