I encountered this book at work in the early 1990s, where a remote and rarely-used conference room had a shelf full of paperback copies of it. I guessed that it had been used as a text in some sort of management seminar, as a practical guide for people who expected to be moving up in the world. I assume they either didn't perceive its satiric/critical tone, or didn't care and thought it to be informative enough regardless.
Anyway, I pilfered a copy and read it, mostly because I was already familiar with Fussel from his classic work _The Great War And Modern Memory_, about the damaging long-term psycho-social effects of WWI. I don't think the underlying anger and disdain of _Class_ can be readily perceived unless you've read that book.
I had also just read Douglas Coupland's _Generation X_, and Fussel's "X Class" seemed like an eerie prophetic vision of the 90's hipster.