Brother has under $10k to spend and wanted low mileage, newer year, and decent gas. AWD was a preferred since he is moving to Utah but not required.

After sifting through newer bland cars like a Chevy Impala, Hyundai Sonata, and Mazda 6 with like 90k miles and no options I found this x-type alternative. His worry is reliability with an older car and price of maintanence. Autocheck shows it does have only 48k miles and looks to have been really taken care of. I figure the dealer would take high $7k instead of sticker since kbb.com shows $6,500 is recommend dealer price (low mileage is always a bit higher than kbb)




Link to post but picture also attached : http://bit.ly/1fAfRAj


My argument is it is always better to get an older car with more options than a newer plain car. He is the type that only takes a car in for an oil change and would sell a car if as much as a timing belt needed to be changed... Am I crazy to recommend this to him?

 

Tell him to buy Accord.
My local repair shop owner, who is a very good mechanic refuses to work on Jaguars. Any small problem and Jag owner will be ripped off.

 

Shouldn't be anything to scare him off Nolan, if he does his due diligence on the car first.

The X type is smiles better than anything else in its class!

Don't know if there are any good Jag indy shops in his area or not, or if he can do reasonably basic car maintenance himself?

Either way, we have an excellent resource here as you know and he'll be welcomed aboard and given good solid sound advice to repair / maintain as required.

Why not tell him to drop by, join up and peruse the site first, I'm sure we can help to put his mind at rest, there's some great guys and plenty of good info here for him.

 

Jaguars are cheap to buy but very expensive to maintain, unless he is going to be willing to do some of the work himself.

I can only speak for myself, but out of my three Jaguars the X type has been the most troublesome and expensive to maintain-and this is doing some of the work myself..... And my other two are respectively a 74 and 95. I am a willing participant, but if someone is looking for a car that requires very little owner involvement, that is not the X type. Or any other Jaguar for that matter, new or classic

 

Well, it's a 2002 so it's 12 years old, and these aren't exactly decent when it comes to fuel consumption.

If someone is looking for a car just to get from A to B in an economical fashion and isn't overly interested in cars, not to mention specifically Jaguars, I would never recommend an X-Type to them. It just makes no sense to pay more if they're getting nothing that is of value to them in return...

 

Mine is a 2002 - a basic 'Classic' model but mechanically exactly the same.. round town he will get 21mpg, and on long runs, fully loaded should get about 31mpg. Yes repairs can be steep if you go to a Jaguar dealer - but most jobs can be done by a local trusted independant.

As with all makes and models of cars there are some very expensive parts that can go .. transmission, engine block, etc etc but in most cases the repairs tend to be run of the mill things like wheel bearings, radiators, hoses etc which are to be honest no more expensive than any other car would be.

I would say if the car checks out nice and clean (see threads on here for specifics to check) you should be OK.. mine is same year, just over 99,000 miles on the clock and the most recent repair of any expense was the water pump and radiator which cost pretty much the same as it did on a Vauxhall Vectra.

My Jag starts every time, and has no more minor annoyances or issues than I would expect with any car built in 2002 :-)

If he likes Jaguar design, or sound :-) then he should be OK with an X-Type if it passes the usual prebuy checks.. but as you'll see from earlier in the thread if he isn't esp into Jaguars then maybe this one is not for him.

Jaguar is much as any manufacturer - beauty in one mans eye is not necessarily the same in another mans eye.. lol.. for me Lamborghinis etc are way to angular and almost an eyesore..... but..... Jaguar, & Bentley completely rock my boat.. it needs to be his choice if he is to get a car that he really enjoys.

 

If your brother is not a car guy and thinks of them as just transportation, best pass on the Jag or any high end car. You'll get the blame at the first high dollar repair.