I am looking for a 2004 XJ8 (must be black!) and higher mileage doesn't scare me if the price is right. I notice most of the 04's tend to have 30-70k miles.

I saw an 04 (black) at texascarsdirect back in January (may have been late Dec.. don't remember exactly) and it had 87k miles on it. They listed and sold it for $12,900 which I thought was an awesome deal. I remember their other cars were in the $16-18,000 range. Those other cars had 30-50k miles.

Now the 04 XJ8's they have are all $19-21,000![:@]

What happened? Thought the used car market was softening? Credit crunch? Bad housing problems in the US? Why are the prices now $3k higher?

Talked to a guy today who had an 04 with 128,000 miles. I figured if texascarsdirect sold an 87k mile car for $12,900, this would be in the $11,000 range. Admittedly, his car was a 1-owner with all highway miles (what other kind of miles could they be in 4 yrs?)but the one at texascarsdirect was mint. So I thought I was comparing apples to apples.

He wanted $14,500 firm![:-] And the scary thing is, he's not out of the ballpark because you can't buy an XJ8 anywhere for less than $20k!

Was I just looking at a bad time of year for car sales (right after Xmas) or something? If so, I'm more than willing to wait till next winter to buy my car. But I haven't seen price swings like that even with convertibles. Did 04 XJ8's with high mileage all of the sudden become popular or something?

Is there no such thing as a ~$13-14k 04 XJ8? There were a bunch only4 months ago!