So a few months ago when I bought my car, the dealer showed me the little book which showed my car valued at around $15.5k. (its an 03 XK8 with 63k miles)

Anyways, I'm wondering if there's an easy way to access those values and perhaps see if the values are going up on our cars.

Anyone have access to this?

 

Here is their website address. I did not read through to see if the average person can access this paid service, or if a dealer or like number is required.

Black Book | Used Car Values | Mobile App | Dealership Software

 

I have discovered a couple of "rules-of-thumb" for pricing of these types of vehicles (i.e., desirable to a select small community and not yet full-fledged classics).

Rule 1: If you happen to be shopping around for one the prices you find will be just a bit more than you are willing to pay.

Rule 2: If you happen to own one and are trying to sell, the offers you get will be a lot less than you were expecting to get.

Doug

 

Makes sense, until they become much harder to find. I read somewhere that there were only a TOTAL of less than 100,000 made for the whole X100 run...That's maybe 10,000 a year at most?

That'll definitely make them much harder to come by, specially since even the newest one is now 10+ years old.

 

if you think that this car might become a classic and the jury is still out, you would want to start acquiring not saleable or not worth fixing specimens. Things like drive train shot on an otherwise straight car. total losses which are only non-structural sheet metal repairs. Then you work your way into the worse specimens. the reason is that first the prime ones, low mileage, like new, original unrestored survivor condition get collected first. then the restore-able with no collision or corrosion damage with all numbers matching. this kills people when they curse the fact that they core returned a major component say an engine or trans instead of rebuilding the original. the idea is that you allow the best to get bought up and then the market moves to next best, however you have to be sure that this is what will happen.

Note that restoring a car is massively expensive. This second stage would require the values to increase at least seven times current to possibly be worth it. This kind of demand might never come and the collector market stalls at the original prime specimens. Also, this would only occur twenty to thirty years from now and changes in the automotive world might make the collector hobby very different. With collectibles you are appealing to people who had the items when they were younger or at least their demographic did and they buy to collect and restore later in life. The E-Type was very affordable new and the people that had them or wanted them aged and built wealth to a point where they have a collectible market. They are also works of art, visually and mechanically without the design trade offs that ours have. when I was a young man, the xk8 was targeted at an older, established market so most of my generation did not aspire to it as young people. me, an oddity.

What we are hoping is that our cars are discovered by a generation that did not grow up with them as a possibility or desire, discovers them and likes them enough, has the means to enter a collectible and/or restoration price market and driving is in some way still consistent with owning such a car. The E-Type was a traditional driven car relevant to the roads of today. If we drive very differently, truly collectible E-Types would still be valuable as seldom if ever again driven pieces of art. i don't know if our cars as wonderful as they are will ever be consider this way or just a few perfect examples will be. you would have to sit on inventory for a long time to speculate here and i do not think that the odds are in your favor. there are costs to storage and vehicles do deteriorate under the best conditions when not in use.

BTW: as the collector market ages out, there are not many to replace them. i predict that a lot of collectable cars will no longer be and lose tremendous amounts of equity and not be easy to liquidate. this is demographics at work and something that i do semi professionally if you have questions.

if you are interested my car is probably third tier, original survivor condition, undamaged, driver quality ideal for a restoration since using it moves it away from being a survivor. it is also not a particular model, common one. the people who might make good investments are the ones who have rarity on their side, but using them becomes a problem.

 

100,000 examples for a collectors car is a lot. Some people are upset with the increased production volume of exotics where single car runs can hit 10,000 or higher. We are not quite at the point where I'd be looking at total units produced.

Besides, the collectors will want true low mileage time capsules (which are rare regardless of production numbers). Not the drivers with 100k miles.

 

High mileage examples become desirable when there is nothing left to buy and the restored value is high enough. I could chain drag an early Series 1, rusted, 500k miles, somewhat together E-Type roadster from a wooded lot and it would be desirable as a restoration. It is all based upon market demand.

I agree with you that now the only value for high production number exotics is low mileage. as an example this even applies to 2000's common model Corvettes. it is the first stage of collectability.

 

Here is another source:

Collector Car Values, Auctions and Profiles at Collector Car Market Reveiw

Hagerty has some time series graphs. XKR is in there, but not XK8. R was pretty flat until just this last year.
https://www.hagerty.com/apps/valuati...ch/auto/Jaguar

But I tend to agree with WhiteHat, with mass produced cars, its mostly demographics and nostalgia at play in determining collector car values and trends. But I don't think 14 years is old enough for "nostalgia" to kick in yet. Generally cars are fully depreciated by about 15 to 20 years old so I would expect that an 03 model is still on the downswing or flat. Look to see what an equivalently equipped 97 is worth and an 03 would probably bottom out within ten or fifteen percent of that is my guess. If it goes up in the short term, its probably more a function of the economy or something else other than collector interest.