At 11:02 AM 11/30/97 -0500, you wrote:
Some people are paying as much as $10000 for MGBs! Why an MGB when 10000
>buys a Bentley T1? Why $6000 for an MGB when a XJ-S is $6000? I ask this
>because if I don't watch out I'm gonna end up sell all the cars and getting
>an Aston DBS. Expensive cars are cheap and the cheap cars expensive... WHAT
>GIVES?
>John
There are many factors in the price of cars. Automotive tastes of the
moment, exclusivity, history(of marque and/or individual car), aggrevation
factor, nostalgia etc... and most often a combination. For instance, when
something DOES go wrong with an XJS it is going to be more expensive to fix
than a B. You don't say if your XJS is a convertible. I know that with
Jensen Interceptors (which will chew up XJS sixes and spit the steel bits
out one exhaust pipe and the other bits out the other, BTW;-) if a saloon is
worth 15K then the convertible version in like condition is about 10K more.
We could take three cars, Aston Martin DBs from the 70s, Interceptors from
70s and XJSs and compare. I think you'd find that their price descends in
the order in which I listed them, much of it has to do with exclusivity, and
in the case of the Interceptor an elitist aversion of American engines. But
to look at this further you'll see that if a car is 'underpriced' it is more
likely to be run by owners who can't put anything back into the car so that
inevitably you get more run down examples on the market which drives down
the price AND reputation, and the cycle continues until some quirk of
automotive taste interupts.
I think XJS values are down because so many of the cars have been in the
hands of non-enthusiasts who basically run 'em into the ground. If a run
down car goes for 3K, then a good example will have a hard time commanding
more than 6-7K and a prime example will probably ceiling out under 10K.
The convertible fetish probably does as much as anything for pricing. Until
recently a good MGB convertible in the UK was fetching nearly as much as an
original V8 GT!
Exclusivity, Series Land-Rovers in the US are usually 2-3 times more
expensive than a similar vehicle in the UK where they're a dime a dozen.
The answer? Buy what you like AND can afford. Frustrating, but simple.
Michael, New Bern, NC
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