Happy Holidays

I am looking into this:
https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/c...246838230.html

I read referred to thread on those years, in this forum. I, also, read Auto Trader end owners reviews, all stellar. Also, that year is listed on Kiplinger most reliable cars list.
I am hoping, it is as pretty inside, as it shows in pics. Have not driven it yet.
My question is - I am not willing to get into a hard to find parts repair nightmare car. I have 98 Grand Marquis, as daily beater, solid tank, but getting a bit tired with 207 000 miles. Also, she is DRAB inside. But, turn key go anywhere, I call her mile eater.
If I can get similar reliability along with some luxury and, surely, style, I'd go for it.
What do you say? Owner swears by that car. Unfortunately, son had a LandRover and that was absolute piece of problematic junk. Spooks me.
Thank you

 

You’ll likely have a bunch of small things to take care of. It’s a 25 year old car, so rubber will have to be replaced. Sensors may have to be replaced along the way. Normally not anything that will strand you.

Not sure if it’s OBD2 compliant yet. It will be partially, but not necessarily enough to help indicate where a problem originated.

The parts are all available, for the most part. Anything difficult to find, is still findable, just expensive. Those parts tend to be body parts.

Read through the forums here, and the facelift XJS’ who also have the same engine and you’ll find that they’re easy to work on.

Lots of support on this forum to help!

 

I have no problem doing simple repairs myself and have car lift. Also, I have family friend I know since his age of 11, who owns repair shop, and he worked on exotics and has lifelong transmission mechanic available.
I'd not even consider, except that that model is listed as one of the most reliable cars. I bought my MGM based on that article and, only was sorry, I didn't do it sooner, it is such a great commuter.
"rubber" as in bushings and such is not a problem, I do all regular maintenance of such nature myself.

 

Seems very good value. Usually there’s a reason for a low price. Once you know what it is you can then decide if it’s worth it. Nothing evident from the description.

the enemy will be rust underneath.

take it for a test drive and listen for any knocks or noise. Also look up when inside at the headlining. Plus try the air con.

then look underneath. Any rust along the sills or near the jacking points?

if no rust and no noises. A bargain!

I don’t think you guys have MOT history like we have in the UK to see if it has had any rust issues in the past.

 

As far as it does not come from Alaska/salt water, there is rather not much rust as winters are very short, snow is few days and salting roads is minimal. Owner says it was nothing but garaged. I know area where he lives - it's artsie aging hippies community on lake Washington shore, facing Mercer island, with Gates and Allen mansions. They tend to have fancy cars.

 

Just a caveat, unlike your Mercury, the local corner auto parts store is not going to have anything in stock, and not much available even tomorrow from their local warehouse. You will be purchasing a lot online from various Jaguar specialist vendors and even visiting your nearest Jaguar dealership parts counter. Much of the trim parts and a few mechanical/electrical items are already obsolete so you will need to find salvage items from time to time. But Jaguar built quite a few and searches aren't difficult. Just be prepared to have to wait a few days for parts delivery. And prices assume that you are still a fat cat with a $60,000 car needing repairs. There's no discount for it now being a $3,800 car. In fact, I've seen some parts more than double in price as the available stock dwindles. I wish I could find the post again to give credit, but somebody several years ago wrote that these were really $10,000 used luxury cars, that you just paid half to the seller and half to your mechanic.

I myself "retired" my XJ8 from the daily grind three years ago and even when I bought it ten years ago, I had other cars to drive in case I had to wait on parts. Plus a repair that a professional could do in a few hours winds up taking me a couple of weekends anyway. Turns out though it was an absolute rock up till it was about 15 years old but by 17, it had accumulated enough needs that repairs were going to take it off the road months of DIY weekends, essentially it needed nearly a full mechanical restoration and a lot of little things to restore the "luxury". I've been working on it off and on for three years but I also have other old cars and an old house to maintain. At this point, it's mostly done and sort of serving as a backup to the XF which is proving to be not nearly as reliable as the XJ8 was when it was younger.

But sounds like you're a pretty serious DIY'er if you have a lift. That's why most of us on this forum are here - serious gearheads. As long as you enjoy wrenching and don't have to have it back together by Monday morning, there's nothing else that drives like an XJ6. I'll warn you that if you do go test drive it and it doesn't have an obvious immediate major problem, you WILL be hooked.

 

Ah, thank you. That was exactly what I was looking for - frank response - in line with what my son told me and, what my wife said. She said, it is not a daily driver, it is sit in garage Sunday car. Baby it. Pretty and all that.
Son said - you buy it, you'll be in bed with dealer at his prices.
Thank you again. I already have daily beater that needs this or that - READILY available from any box store at very modest prices - at 207 000 miles, with new engine and trannie just done few months back. I have new property truck sit in garage, move only to do some hauling or move oil around. Though I do have 6 garages, I am out of space for a Sunday car, with wife's car, MGM in one, UTV and truck in one, and son/DIL cars. And, last but not least, I actually work for living. I am not Howie, who owns dealership and can afford to buy old used cars to discuss on his YT channel.
I need a bit more luxurious RELIABLE/CHEAP daily driver, as my MGM is drab, with all due respect.
Gentlemen, thank you for your responses. Special thanks to Phil D for honest and very useful post.
Park Avenue it is.

 

I've put 40k on mine just this year, never had any real downtime. If you want to go with the jag rockauto is gonna be your friend when it comes to parts.

 

I do about 1200-1500 a month. I need a nicer commuter, that's all. One that will not strand me and cost a lot in repairs. So I can retire my MGM. Wish I could keep her as backup, but that means too many cars and I have truck, just in case.

Hmmm.. just looked at jagrockauto. Parts are not that pricey, really, at a glance. I mean, maintenance parts - pads, rotors, MC and such.

 

For the most part it's fairly cheap, just a little wait on shipping.

If you need tons of space remember that the 95 is short wheelbase only and has a small backseat/trunk compared to your MGM, drives a lot different of course.

 

If its ride quality you're looking for, sadly there's not many late models that can be considered a true luxury sedan. Your Mercury was one of the last true luxury platforms along with the DTS ending in 2011. I drove just about everything in the market segment a few years ago. I couldn't find anything less than five years old for under $40,000 that could be called a "luxury sedan". Almost everything built in the last ten years is a "sport sedan". Mercedes E class with their Airmatic suspension on the lowest setting was OK but as a DIY'er, I didn't want to live with the risk that comes with that complexity. I had a Lexus LS before, but they also rely on air suspension to get a smooth ride. Even the new XJ needs air suspension to be able to carve corners and still be tolerable. The base Infiniti Q70 has conventional springs and was close to the Mercedes but I never could find one with the V8 that didn't also have the "sport" package. I wound up with a newer Jaguar at least partly due to the positive experience with the XJ8, but as a DIY'er, I found that I could order the Spires aftermarket suspension package for the XF that together with some smaller wheels and taller sidewalls converts it back into luxury sedan. As a used car, Jaguar was also much cheaper than a comparable E-class or Infiniti and that sort of justified the cost of the mods. Its not the magic carpet ride of the XJ8 but with the modifications it rides about as well as the Mercedes.

I had briefly considered just finding a newer XJ8 like the one I had with much lower miles, but I figured that would only get me three years newer and soon I'd be back in the same boat with an aging car. With your Mercury, you could at least get another as new as 2011, which would be 13 years newer. There's probably plenty of low-mileage, little-old-lady, church-on-sunday kind of examples that deserve to be saved from the fate of being converted to a donk. We used to have Crown Vic's in our company motor pool and I really liked them. A good friend of mine is still dailying a 2011 Grand Marquis that he bought new and he upgraded from an older model specifically to get one of the last ones while they were still available. I might have considered one but its a little too long to comfortably fit in my home's attached garage.

 

FWIW, In 2010, I replaced a 1991 GMDS (ok, I keep getting confused with your reference to MGM, thinking - small British car? Hotel? so you'll have to put up with my abbreviation for the Grand Maquis de Sade) with a 1995 VDP. The GMDS was purchased from my MiL in 1994 with about 15k on the clock. She was the original owner. Odometer crapped-out at 72,449 but I reckon it had about 230k actual miles on it when I parked it behind the shop with a collection of failures that rendered it un-driveable for most months in Texas: Failed a/c in conjunction with all 4 electric windows failed-up. The 5.0L V-8 wasn't running all that well, at the time, either.

In contrast, the 1995 Jag joined the fleet with 63,000 on the odometer, in otherwise immaculate condition, save an ABS caution (C1095) and air-pump failure, P0410. It is still my primary daily drive today with 264, 068 on the "Still-working" odometer. It has stranded me once, in all of those miles - a blown b@$t@rd-hose and that not assigned to Jag - it was a 3-6 mo. old Uro replacement. I'd replaced the 20 yr old original earlier while doing other preventative maintenance. I've mended the ABS fault by soldering the motor leads on the ABS module board. The air pump fault does not impact my ability to pass inspection here in my locality. While the air pump was, in fact, shot...that was not the only problem. There is a fault somewhere in the wiring as I blew the fuse when I fitted a known good air pump from one of the subsequently-acquired X300's. As I said, no impact to operation nor regulations, so I just clear the code with my phone 2-3 times/mo. when it pops up.

I say "primary daily driver" because for the past year, it has been alternating with a 1997 XJ6 I acquired when the owner decided differential repairs were a bridge too far, given the value of the car, and I was in possession of an excellent differential/IRS assembly in an otherwise totaled 1996 VDP that my son managed to get T-boned by an F-150. The 97 just recently crossed the 200k mile mark.

As to the driving experience. I have no notion of how your newer, rounded-corners, GMDS, er....MGM performs with respect to my 1991 GMDS w/5.0L, but I can say with great confidence that from my first test-drive, in a 1995 XJ-6 with a whining diff and several other faults (that I didn't buy, btw) I have never, ever yearned to be back behind the wheel of the ponderous, slow-to-accelerate, GMDS!

Now, to impart a bit of my automotive philosophy: I believe if you "need" a car....you REALLY need two, irrespective of how reliable (or not) your primary is. This postulate is based on the belief that there is very little that a competent individual cannot mend on a car, in conjunction with the fact that when specialized tools are involved, they can almost ALWAYS be purchased for less than the cost of one hired repair for which they are required. So even the most reliable, bulletproof cars ever made eventually fail - it is just what machines do. The reason many are hesitant to attempt to mend their own is timing. "I have to drive it to work on Monday, and I'm not confident I can complete that repair this weekend." So back to my postulate, even if you hire the repair to be completed, you are frequently without the car (let's remember, it is a car you "need" as in it is your only transportation between where you are and where you need to be) for several days and now must make alternate arrangements. Additionally, even though the corner autoparts store may have your parts on the shelf, you can frequently obtain the same brand/part no. from Rock or similar for 1/2 the cost. So park the broke one, drive your spare until your parts and tools are in-hand, and mend the primary.

Sounds like you have plenty of "spares" available, as well as a lift.......I think perhaps you just like driving boring, ponderous hunks of mass-produced American iron. Nothing wrong with that. But given what you've described of your situation, I'd counsel that you at least go have a look and a drive before you write it off as a bad idea.

(I bought the kid's T-boned 96 in Phoenix, AZ, but it had only been there about a year....most of its service life was in Seattle, WA and there was no rust, whatsoever on the car.)