I always liked the look of the Jaguar XJ sedans-and the interiors are very nice-usually, leather seats and walnut dash paneling, and real wool carpeting. I’ve been tempted to buy a used one-but mechanics have warned me that repairs are very expensive. For example, to replace the rear brake pads on the XJ6 is a 10 hour job (it involves removing he rear axle assembly). Plus parts are expensive. Has anyone bought an older Jag (10+ years old) and had good luck? Or are these cars money pits? I have heard that it is hard to find independent mechanics who will service these cars-so you wind up paying $120.00/hour at a dealer.
This was asked a couple of times a few years ago. The consensus was that older Jags should be treated like other British cars (i.e., they break), only with much more expensive parts.
Big thing to remember: It was a rich man’s car when new, and so it has rich man parts prices & rich man car cosmosity (ie failure-prone bleeding-edge features) even after the individual vehicle is a run-out poor man’s car.
If you buy one, be prepared to write your investment down to zero if anything non-trivial fails.
They say Jaguars are great cars if you buy two of them at a time. The second one is a spare for all the times your first one is in the shop.
Might as well get a third, for parts, while you’re at it. 
Damn, you beat me to it; I came here to post that.
To my continuing amazement, since Ford took over Jaguar, the reliability has improved drastically. When I bought my 2001 XJ8, it came with a four-year/40K mile warranty. And during this period, all the servicing was free. I’ve now had it over six years, and nothing at all has gone wrong with it. You might want to look at the 2000 or 2001 XJ8s, as they are somewhere around $10-12K. They are really great looking, beautiful to drive, and the interior can’t be beaten for class. The 2001 has 290HP and 290 pounds-feet of torque, so it really moves. If you really want a beautiful boat, look at the XKEs convertibles.
I’d really be careful with the older ones, ralph124, as they really were prone to problems and as has been noted, it ain’t cheap to fix 'em.