I have always wondered about those cars tha sell for big bucks (> $100,000 nw). All cars depreciate, and I cannot see rich eople buying a used car. So what happenes to these cars when they hit 100,000 miles? Do middle calss people buy them? I think a used luxury car (particularly British and German makes) is a bad choice-they cost a fortune to fix, and parts are frequently difficult to find. So, what happens to them? If a luxurt car drops down below $10,000, then there is the possibility that a blue collar buyer will snap one up-and then I think the cars will fall apart-one Joe Sixpack sees a $6,000 repair bill, he will scrap the car.
As for restoring such a car, unless you have the wealth of a Jay Leno, I would say forget it.
Would you buy a 15 year old Rolls-Royce for $20,000?
We had a 2000 Range Rover that finally gave up the ghost last year after about 145,000 miles. We bought it as a lease return with about 45,000 miles on it. It was a great car but expensive as hell to maintain. When repairs were like car payments, we chucked her in. Sold her to the mechanic, actually! 
British cars have improved a lot in the last 10 years or so (of course, all three of our Land Rovers were built by BMW…). I would consider a Rover, Jag or Rolls built in 2000 or later for the right price/mileage ratio, and I would buy a classic Jag.
German is a whole 'nuther ballgame. If I was driving a sedan, it would be a BMW 7 series, regardless of the cost to maintain.
Check out the episodes with the Top Gear Cheap Car Challenges for some entertaining answers.
I have a used Jag XJS V12 that I got for $7,000. It’s got 75k miles on it. Replacing tires was more pricey than on American cars…only Perellis fit. Otherwise repairs have been minimal and replacement parts are readily available and reasonably priced.
There was an article in Classic Motorsports an issue or two ago that discussed owning a Rolls or Bentley. Unfortunately that article is not online. Good examples can be found at reasonable prices, but the article pointed out things to watch for. Basically the advice is to buy the best example you can, as some of the systems can cost a lot to fix. If I come across that issue, I’ll post a few items.
Do you mean Luxury cars, e.g. BMW 5-series, Mercedes E-Class, Lexus GS, Audi A6, Cadillac STS?
Or do you mean Exotic cars, e.g. Maserati GT, Aston Martin DBS, Ferrari California, Bentley Continental?
If you mean the former, cars ranging from $50,000-$80,000 that are mass produced and readily available on showrooms everywhere then the answer is simple. They enter the second-hand market just like any other used car. Typically they are in high demand due to the relatively small depreciation and cache and I speculate that most get sold to friends and family before entering the open market.
If you mean the later, truly exotic cars ranging from $150,000 - $500,000 that are not mass produced and typically are pre-sold before they ever reach the dealership then the answer is much different. Those cars don’t generally depreciate at all. Often people pay far over MSRP for the opportunity to purchase them new. Once they enter the market they tend to accrue value over time and the scarcity makes them a collectors item. Rarely do they enter the traditional second-hand market and when a owner decides to get rid of the car they will deal it through a broker who already has a catalog of potential buyers who are seeking that specific car. Sometimes those buyers are dealerships looking to flip it for a big profit or who might just want to have it on the lot to lure in shoppers. Other times they are just rich people who like to rotate cars and will flip exotics just out of boredom. Occasionally brokers will approach previous buyers and persuade them to trade for a nicer model he has on hand when they aren’t even in the market, but the broker knows the customer might be convinced for a different model. Then he takes the other car and repeats the process.
There are cars that probably fall somewhere in the middle. Mass produced cars that aren’t particularly rare and aren’t considered collectibles, but with luxury price tags in the $100k range that sneak into used car showrooms but those probably get sold very quickly. In many cases the used car dealer would buy them for personal use or call a VIP customer and give them first crack at it.
I seriously considered a 2000 BMW 760iL or a 2003 Jaguar XJ8 before deciding on a Jeep. There were also a few Town Cars and STS’s I looked at. If you know what to look for and don’t mind a used car they can be found for what you would pay for a new entry level model a lot of the time.
There’s something nice about driving aroud in a luxury car you only spent 12 to 19,000 on that you know plenty of other people paid over 50,000 for.
Suppose you have a dog like a MAYBACH (M-B luxury brand). These things went for $300,000; but the brand never took off-and they were never good looking (to me, they resembled a DAEWOO Leganza). So, a rich guy trades his in-and the car sits on the lot-how long before it gets marked down?
As I say, ultra-expensive cars face a very uncertain future-they are so expensive to fix (a brake job on a 1980’s Rolls is about $8,000), so their resale value is likely to be low.
Evry so often you see an old M-B “beater” belching blue smoke and rusted out…but not too ofen.
I just wanted to say that I read the thread title as “What Becomes of Used Luxury Cats?”. 
(Good question though.)
Here’s a Maserati on Craigslist. A little out of my price range, though.
What’s your question?
Look here. Used bespoke cars like a Mayback simply don’t “go on sale”. There are only 34 of them available in the US. The cheapest used one is still over 50% of MSRP and that’s in a really bad economic climate.
Rolls-Royce on eBay.
It’s maybe not really a luxury car, but a few years ago while out for a walk I saw an old stretch limo. The current owner was obviously a painter by trade, as there was a set of extension ladders on the after-market roof racks, and the back seating section was full of big buckets of paint.
If you want to see a relatively large market of luxury, sports, and exotic cars, check out the selection at DuPont Registry.
They have everything from Acura to Aston Martin, Ford to Ferrari, Mercury to Maserati, Volkswagen to Vector.
It caters to a national (even, in some cases, an international) market. There are currently 303 Aston Martins, 794 Ferraris, 497 Lamborghinis, 271 Maseratis, 1109 Porsches, and 224 Rolls Royces listed for sale on the site.
Anyone else perturbed by the implication in the opening post that “middle class” people are generally too smart to buy a prestigious car at a bargain knowing it will be expensive to maintain, but that “blue collar” workers would snap up such a white elephant?
Because Dog knows, people who work in the trades are short sighted and eager to acquire fancy baubles, and especially have no clue when it comes to machinery.
I never read that into it.
Me neither.
Ralph is right in that the maintenance costs for some of the luxury cars is much higher. I know a guy with a 2001 Mercedes and every time that thing goes into the shop, its a $1,000.00 repair. It seems to happen every three months, too which makes it an expensive car to own.
This reminds me of something I read back in the '80s, about buying a used airplane. The gist of the article was along the lines of ‘Sure, you can buy a twin-engine airplane for $50,000. But remember that you’re still maintaining a $250,000 airplane.’
I think where most people get into trouble is when they buy a formerly expensive car for a song. The general advice when buying a car is to buy the best example you can afford. One classic example is of someone who buys a '70s or '80s Jaguar XJ-6. He gets it cheaply because it has a lot of miles on it. Then he finds out how expensive rebuilding the engine is. That’s why so many of these cars now have Chevy engines. Another thing is that some things are expensive to fix on a given car. People may spend money to fix one problem, but ignore maintenance on lesser problems until the lesser problem becomes one that makes the car undrivable. Or else they’ll kludge repairs because of the expense of doing them properly, and the car slowly deteriorates.
Another anecdote; my brother got rid of his M-B 500S sedan two years ago. The car was bankrupting him-as a previous poster mentioned, you can count on service at M-B being expensive. at any rate, he asked the sales manager what they would do with the car-it was being shipped to Turkey (rebuilding old M-Bs is a cottage industry there). It would be rebuilt, and begin a new life as a taxicab in Istanbul.
As for older Jag X-J6 cars-they can be deadly; and fixing them is really expensive. you do see a few rusted-out heaps carwling along. What really kills a jag-once the shock absorber mounts rust out, the car is worthless-off to the junkyard.