I was cruising thru craigslist.com for a used car.
I stumbled upon a few Jaguar X series from 2000-2004 for about 4-6000 bucks. Each looked perfect inside and out, and had 90-120k miles each.
WTF? Used Toyotas with that many miles usually start at 6K.
Are Jags that unreliable or hard to maintain, or just expensive to maintain?
Thanks,
hh
Probably the latter. The number 1 car on that list, the mercedes CL55 AMG, essentially is a used car that you’ll need to spend tens of thousands of dollars sooner or later to keep running. That means if you buy it, either you later spend 30k or you wasted all your money. That’s why the sale price for that 100k car is about 10 grand for a used one because I think people perceive it’s true “cost” if they choose to buy it as 40k or so, or having to pay 10k to have a car for about a year.
I bet that’s the same for those Jags : you’ll need to drop 10-20 grand or so on maintenance within a year or 2, or you just rented a car for a year. Either way, it’s not a bargain at all.
Supposedly because they have a reputation for being expensive to repair and maintain. I don’t know if that is still the case, I think the idea that they are crap car started in the 70s and they could be a lot better now. If they are now reliable cars (no idea) but consumers still think they are crap you could get a decent one for cheap. No one wants to buy a white elephant so prices go down.
On the other hand, that is why toyotas and hondas don’t depreciate much, people assume they are low maintenance vehicles.
Brits had/have the unfortunate habit of soldering the electrical connectors (they should be crimped).
The soldered joint is rock hard at the end of a (cheap) stranded wire. Vibration causes the wire (which is free to wiggle) to wiggle while the end is solid.
Result: dead circuit, and good luck figuring which wire is responsible, then where on the wire the break is.
Short form: it’s not just Jags (for that screw-up, at least)
The rule has always been: a Jag is NEVER your sole means of transportation. They spend way too much time in the shop.
A Jaguar X-Type is a Ford Mondeo. Depending upon spec there can be a greater or lesser degree of mechanical difference from the Ford, but the underlying platform is all Ford. You get a different set of body panels, nicer paint, and a much swisher interior, but buyers know what it is.
Once you get to cars this old, the legendary build quality and long term reliability of a Toyota will start to make the value proposition much closer.
Older Jags have also had a really bad reputation for build quality and reliability. They have taken a long time to live that down. The current cars are holding up well, and are really nice. The XF is still built on a Ford platform (Lincon) but the difference is significantly greater than with the X-Type. Top end Jags, (F type, XJ saloon) are a very different proposition. But as noted above, once any very high end car gets to a certain age, their resale value drops badly due to upkeep costs that are still proportional to their new purchase price.
Jaguars used to have a horrible reputation for spending more time in the shop than on the road. They were bought by Ford in 1990 and their quality improved dramatically (although technically they had been working on improving quality since the mid 80s). They were split off from Ford in 2007, so the 2000 - 2004 models you are looking at are late Ford era Jags, which aren’t that bad in terms of quality and maintenance costs, at least not compared to other Jags. They are luxury cars with a limited market, and the folks that buy those kinds of cars have a big preference for new cars, so in addition to a reputation for being very difficult and expensive to maintain there’s also a relatively small market for used ones. Old Cadillacs and Lincolns are inexpensive as well, though part of that is that they have a reputation for being old people’s cars.
Toyotas also have a reputation for extremely high quality and running forever. Their reputation IMHO is a bit exaggerated and I personally think that used Toyotas aren’t worth as much as they go for, but they do sell high these days.
I had a '07 Jag convertible I bought used. Paid next to nothing for it with under 60K on it. I didn’t have many problems with it, but know a few people with the same year/model that did. 75K seemed to be the fracture point when lots of problems started for them. In reality cars should not have significant major problems now days until at least 110K or more. So it appears Jaguar has earned some of it’s bad rep. Parts used to be a bit of a hassle to get but not so much anymore.
Still, if you’re not intending to put a lot of miles on it, maybe use it as a weekend pleasure car like I did, I strongly recommend one. They are absolutely gorgeous cars inside and out. Even one that is 15 years old, if properly maintained, doesn’t look outdated.
This is the real answer. To a Jag fan the X-type is simply not a Jaguar. It’s the wrong size, it has the wrong engine, wrong transmission, etc. It doesn’t have much value to enthusiasts, so as a used car it’s really more comparable to a very nice Ford Contour.
I have often wondered this concerning Rolls Royce. I think it’s a combination of them being expensive to repair and also that those who can afford to purchase a used Rolls for a decent price probably can afford to buy new. So that kills the resell value.
This is a big part of it. Luxury cars in general depreciate very quickly because the people who want to spend big money on them want a brand-new one…there’s not a big market to save a few bucks by buying a used low-mileage luxury car, so a large gap emerges between the new car cost and the used market value.
That, combined with the fear of high maintenance costs and the occasional less-desirable model (like the Ford-based Jags) sometimes results in a VERY cheap used luxury car.
The opposite happens with certain cars that are big in the enthusiast market…some big standouts are the Subaru WRX and the Jeep Wrangler – people want them badly and are looking to save a few bucks and unlike luxury buyers VERY willing to buy used, and a WRX or Wrangler with 30,000 miles will have depreciated surprisingly little from their original cost.
“The parts falling off the car are of the finest British manufacture.”
Jaguar and Land Rover score pretty low on CR reliability ratings.
Even “prestige” cars with much better reputations for reliability still depreciate pretty quickly. Conspicuous consumption is the whole point of these sorts of cars for a large portion of the buyers and so buying a used one somewhat defeats the purpose. For buyers who want one but can’t swing the payment for a new one, leasing is the more popular option, which of course only worsens the glut of used ones and lack of buyers who want them.
Conversely, used car buyers are a lot more worried about long-term reliability than most new car buyers, and so with cars like Hondas and Toyotas with near-mystical reputations for reliability there’s a disconnect between the demand for these in the used market and the actual supply coming from new car buyers. Hence the hefty premium they command over other similarly-aged used cars, even ones that were several times more expensive when they were new.
Someone else said it.
The X type and also the larger S type are generally frowned upon by Jag aficionados.
The X Type is a Mondeo (Contour) and the S type was a Lincoln LS platform and if you go with the V6 in the S, that was a Ford’s pedestrian ‘Duratec’ engine, not a Jag engine.
Sales of the X were never stellar probably for reasons given above. I think the BMW 3 series outsold the X type 10:1 in the mid 2000s.
Old saying: “A Jaguar can pass anything on the road, except for a service station”. Mad Men did a darkly hilarious riff on this when the agency won the Jaguar account.
They joke among themselves about how bad the cars are while pitching for the business. Soon after they win the account, one of the partners tries to commit suicide in the new Jag his wife bought him. It doesn’t start!
Jaguars have (had) Lucas electronics. Lucas was referred to as the Prince of Darkness due to the unreliability of the electrical systems.
Having owned a Sunbeam in the past and having had friends with MGs, Triumph, and Lotus automobiles, your statement is very true. Additionally, replacement parts were pricey.
Lucas Jokes: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~mtmorris/index3.html
Although it is not true, my favorite is, “Why didn’t the Germans bomb the Lucas factory? They considered them allies.”
So X Types are really Contours? I liked Contours. Especially the SVT, which would be cheaper to fix than a Jag.
“Rolls Royce cars never break down. They just fail to proceed.”
My dad was, for a while, a “pragmatic” luxury car driver, and tended to buy from a Bentley dealer who would often have trade-ins for sale of BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, etc, often with less thank 10k on the odometer. Pretty amazing how much the price drops for a year-old car with that little use when you’re buying luxury.
When I considered buying a BMW, a fellow who owned one said “they are very nice cars, but every service checkup will cost you $500 or more.” Unlike say, Honda or Toyota, where regular service will be in the $100 to $200 range, the guy was right _$500 to $600 each time. Not that they were playing games, it was legitimate service, just the rates were somewhat higher and parts definitely were. A co-worker with a Mercedes said the same was true for his car. My impression is that this is true for all prestige cars - BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, Audi, Volvo, etc. if the car costs twice what the Japanese/Korean equivalent costs, so does the service.
Considering you can get the same or better reliability from Japan, the value of an expensive to maintain vehicle drops quickly when it reaches the age to need service more often.