By accessing this website, you acknowledge that Edmunds and its third party business partners may use cookies, pixels, and similar technologies to collect information about you and your interactions with the website as described in our
Privacy Statement, and you agree that your use of the website is subject to our
Visitor Agreement.
Comments
Besides, old cars can run "okay" and even reliably with thousands of dollars in repairs needed. For instance, worn suspension/struts can bounce along nicely for a long, long time. Various little oil leaks, erratic transmission shifting, a broken AC, one rear power window not working, a little rust----none of these things stops the car from providing basic transprtation.
ANYWAY, i don't consider a Buick a real luxury car in the spirit of how we started this topic, so we are kinda off topic here. This subject might make for another interesting topic though -- "Deferred Maintenance?" or some such, or "What Can You Get Away With?"
I dunno, I'd consider Lemko's Park Ave, along with my NYer, to be two luxury cars that are out standing in their field. Sorry, bad pun. :shades:
If Buicks were "luxury" than what are Mercedes, Lexus, 7 Series BMWs, Bentley, etc. "Super Luxury"? "Ultra Luxury"?
If a Buick is "luxury" so then is every other car in the price range, which means just about all cars are luxurious, which means just about no cars are actually luxurious.
Dilution of meaning. Language inflation.
By 1988 standards, I'd consider Lemko's Park Ave to be a luxury car. That thing probably stickered for $22K or more, which is an awful lot of money in my book! My '79 NYer probably stickered for about $10K, while my other one, the 5th Ave, was probably around $12K...up into Cadillac/Lincoln territory, and I've always considered those to be luxury cars. Now that's chump change compared to what a nice Benz or BMW would have set you back in the same years
But, time has marched on. Cars have more standard features these days, as well as more power. So more has to be done to separate the real luxury cars from the rest of the herd.
What exactly is the difference between "low end luxury" and "high end economy"?
You've got to have a standard here, and to my mind the standard for what we call "luxury" has gone far beyond GMs 1988 idea of it.
There is simply no comparison in luxury, appointments, technology and complexity between an old Buick and a Mercedes S600.
GEEZ if you can't fix a simple 1988 Buick, then coping with a used BMW 7 Series is going to bring you to ruin and devastation right quick. :surprise:
Well to me, "high end economy" would be something like a fully-loaded Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic. Cars that might be well appointed, but are still small, sacrifice comfort, and have a primary focus on fuel efficiency.
I might consider a "low end luxury" car today to be something like an Acura TL or Toyota Avalon. On the domestic front perhaps something like a well-appointed Buick Lucerne or a Chrysler 300 Limited or C. Or maybe a better term for them would be "near luxury", which is what they started calling that step-up class back when Acura first came out, and then Infiniti and Lexus followed.
Take a Cadillac, whose status regarding luxury branding has been destroyed over the last few decades. The residuals are crazy low. If you get $4K off a CTS, that locks in a faster decline in value as soon as you drive that car off the dealer lot. In 1 year, you are in the mid $20K at best for a upper $30K vehicle. Punch in a 2007 CTS at Cars.com and before the first 50 cars are viewed in a country-wide search, mid-twenties. A CTS-V under 10K miles is mid-$30K.
The Germans are hurting as well but since they start at a much higher price the value decline isn't as drastic as domestic brands.
Regards,
OW
I can not get used to the Arts and Science.
Regards,
OW
Regards,
OW
Outside of the paint problem and a slightly split driver's door arm rest, not much that bothers me. The radio/cassette deck still works. It blows icy cold A/C. The interior is in excellent condition. It has new tires and brakes. It's got a couple of small dents here and there, but that's my fault and not the car's.
Best thing about my beater is I can take it anywhere and can rely on it to get me out of anywhere. Heck, a doctor might find 35 things wrong with me, but I could still live to be 100 regardless.
If Buick Park Avenue is luxury, then PA Ultra represents "Ultra Luxury." How could it be otherwise? Not ready to pass the Grey Poupon quite yet? Okay, then, if PA isn't quite luxury, but merely near-luxury, then PA Ultra crosses the line into luxury, no?
I'd say PA Ultra meets the definition of American luxury. As for "Super Luxury," Buick once had a "Super" in its lineup, but since it was less super than the mighty Roadmaster, then maybe it could have been categorized as "almost near-luxury."
I think the 70's, and the push for more luxurious cheaper cars, probably muddled a lot of people's ideas of what a luxury car should be. Also around that time, sales of more expensive cars just exploded. Lincoln and Cadillac both had some record sales years.
The main reason I'll still defend something like Lemko's Park Ave and my '79 New Yorker is because their forebears were luxury cars. Or at least, IMO they were. If you go back to, say, 1955, a New Yorker or Buick Roadmaster were very luxurious cars. They were still a step below a Cadillac or Imperial in price, although there was a bit of overlap with Lincoln. Well I always considered a Caddy, Lincoln, or Imperial to be a luxury car, so because the NYer and Roadmaster were close enough in price, I'd just lump them in as well, as the bottom end of the luxury market.
Back in those days, the Olds 98, while the top Olds, had very little in common with the Roadmaster. The Roadmaster shared the big C-body with the Cadillac. Actually the Super did as well, but it was much lower in price and not as well-appointed. More akin to a DeSoto Fireflite or Chrysler Windsor in price, IIRC. In contrast, the Olds was on the B-body, same as the 88 and the Buick Special/Century. They stretched the wheelbase to make it look more impressive, but managed to do it in a way that yielded no more interior room (a common trait back then
As the years went on, though, the cheaper cars got nicer, while the nicer cars got cheaper. The Roadmaster was replaced by the Electra for 1959. That same year, the 98 went from the B-body to the C-body, so it became more of an equal to the senior Buick, and at the point I'd consider it a luxury car. But soon, cars like the Caprice, LTD, and VIP would be on the scene, with interiors that were as plush or plusher than some of the base trim levels of the Electra/98 and New Yorker. And when equipped with the right engine, performance would be as good or better.
The 1970's was when it really got convoluted, though. Ford launched the tacky, pretentious Granada, which was an instant hit. Mopar issued the Dart SE and Valiant Brougham, which had enough velour, shag, and thickly padded vinyl to out-rival a Cadillac or Lincoln. And they'd do more of the same with the Aspen SE and Volare Premier. GM put out luxury versions of the Nova, Skylark, et al. The impudence probably peaked with 1977, and the Lincoln Versailles. IIRC it was the priciest Lincoln that year, yet it was little more than a tarted up Granada, which itself was based on the humble Maverick...and I hear that can even be traced back to the Falcon.
People were definitely demanding more luxurious cars in the 1970's, especially in the later years. In the past, cars like the Chevrolet Caprice and Pontiac Bonneville had been relatively scarce compared to the mainstream Impala and Catalina. Yet in 1977, the market shifted and the Caprice and Bonneville were outselling the cheaper Impala and Catalina. Similarly, with Olds and Buick, the higher trim levels of the Delta 88 and LeSabre were outselling the cheaper models.
I guess that for all the whining about what a bad era that was, car buyers had enough disposable income to get into those pricier models. And while they were still upscale, plush cars, they were no longer relatively scarce, as they had been in the past. If anything, it was the more base level cars that were becoming the rarities.
Here's a question - I remember reading somewhere that Chevy/Olds/Buick fullsize cars added lots of available luxury features when the edict came down at GM that all division executives had to drive cars from their division. This created a need for 'luxurious' models. Does anyone know if there's any truth to this? (wish I could remember where I read it :mad: )
IMO, the car didn't really accomplish anything that the old Bonneville Brougham couldn't have done. In fact, once the Grand Ville name was retired, Pontiac brought back the Bonneville Brougham.
As for the Chevy Caprice, IMO the 1970's models really weren't any more luxurious inside than the 1960's models, so I guess Chevy's division execs got the short end of the stick! That mandate may have been the reason that the 1971 Chevies had sort of a Cadillac-ish looking front end, though.
I don't think you could get leather in a Grand Ville or Bonneville Brougham back in those days, and I'm positive that the Caprice didn't offer it, so that was another area where the Chevy/Pontiac execs would've been screwed by that mandate.
Eventually, I think the downsized Bonneville offered leather, or maybe it was the 1983-86 Parisienne. I don't think you could get leather in a Caprice until around 1987.
Market saturation of various features is something else, I guess, that dilutes the meaning of a luxury car as time goes by. For instance, once upon a time, air conditioning was a luxury item. So were power windows and leather. These days though, it's almost impossible to find a new car without a/c and power windows. And leather is available in just about everything but the cheapest cars.
Regards,
OW
The first qualification of a luxury car is that it be an uncommon and rare motor car. A car you don't frequently see in the shopping mall parking lot. A car sold only in the cities large enough to support an NFL or MLB team. As of yet, such is not manufactured in the USA, the Orient, or Norway.
Is armor plate considered "luxurious"?
And Detroit supports an NFL team.....if you can call it that.
Poor Detroit....poor, poor Detroit...
median home price San Francisco $500,000
median home price Detroit: $80,000
We in the "Classics" Forum are trying, in this particular forum topic, to focus on the problems and pitfalls of buying older, used luxury cars.
You might want to scan the list of topics in "Automotive News" forum, many of which deal with the very issues you are bringing up. I pulled it up for you:
List Containing Topics on the State of the American Automotive Industry
thanks!
MrShiftright
Host
Ouch! A friend gave me the same reason for selling his almost-new Jaguar 20 years ago, except he was referring to the car payment on the Jaguar. :sick:
One of my friends bought a used 2002 or so BMW 5-series, as a 40th birthday present to himself back in 2007. I think it only had around 25-30,000 miles on it. Almost immediately, I think he had to sink a couple grand into it. I forget what exactly the issues were, but one of them was water leaking into the interior!
I've ridden in it a few times. Nice car. I can definitely see the appeal of them. I especially like the way that it somehow manages to give you good road feel, yet a smooth ride at the same time. Usually a car will give you one at the expense of the other. And some cars aren't very good at either!
He still keeps the car out back though, he loves it so much.
Wow, that's a crazy amount of money to blow on maintenance/repairs over the first 10 years of a car's life! FWIW, my Intrepid has run me about $30K over the course of the 9 years I've had it. But then that total includes the purchase cost of the car!
What would that 750i have cost new? About $80-90K?
Too blue for my blood but hey, if you can afford it, why not?
Today it is worth less than $10K
so if you include depreciation, the car has cost perhaps $100,000 in ten years for 100K miles, so about $1 a mile. That's about par for high end cars. A Ferrari would cost easily $1.50 a mile to drive if not more.
I hope someone gives you a free 1956 Cadillac that needs 'just a little work'.
If I'm really mad, I change it to Jaguar! :P
"You will have very good days with this car, and you will have very bad days with this car".
One of the more knowledgeable "admirers" quipped, "You may have bought it cheap, but you have only just begun to pay for it".
I always wondered why they didn't just put one single tank under the trunk. Unless, because of the shape of the car, maybe that would make the trunk itself too shallow to be useful? Nowadays, if a RWD car has IRS, they put the tank under the back seat, just like in FWD. Wonder why they didn't do that with the Jag? Unless again, there just wasn't that much room under there?
They did improve the horrible automatic transmission on the XJ6, and finally got fuel injection on there--but even that had its problems. Like, why would you put rubber fuel injection hoses under the manifold? And why have the AC cool the fuel? And inboard brakes in the rear? (you have to drop the entire rear suspension and differential to change the rotors out).
Fires are something to watch out for, especially in the V-12s. You have those quirky injection lines cracking and leaking, the saddle tanks rusting out and leaking, and the fuel pump in the trunk often leaking.
The fuel injection for the V-12 model is sometimes referred to as "the auxiliary heating system", in typical British humor.
I like to think of an XJ6 as a cruel mistress. Pretty but very deadly.
As you know, I am very biased against this model, because it represents Jaguar's abandonment of its glorious sports car tradition (think Porsche) in order to make land yachts (think Buick).
Was the XJ6 a direct replacement for that porky thing from the 1960's? The 420 or whatever it was called? Those things weren't considered sporty, were they?
Hey, in looking at some old pics, I just had a revelation. Well, to me at least...probably nothing new to most people. But it just hit me that the 420 is nothing but a clumsy re-skin of the old Mark II. Looking at pics side-by-side, it looks like the doors, roof, and all glass is the same.
Would the 420 at least still perform like a Mark II, or did they find a way to botch that up in transition?
I love the Mark II cars, (not the S Type, which I think is rather homely), especially with 4-speed manual trans with OD, wire wheels, 3.8 engine. Sweet car.
Really the only 4-door car in automotive history I can think of that I'm in love with. Some others I "like" (61 Lincolns, 65 Corvair 4D HT, blah blah) but the Mark II just "gets it all right".
That's about...what...a 1967 model? Shoot, I'd rather have a Benz 280SE sedan for same or less money.