Lol at the standard motors reply
Would this apply to anybody wanting a proper performance / luxury car for under 10 grand ?
It applies less as the cost goes up.
To illustrate the point, we'll use two extreme pricepoints.
You want to buy a car. The most you can possibly get together is a grand. This means you are highly unlikely to be able to afford to look after an old high performance car unless you are a mechanic by trade (and even then parts and consumables still cost money).
You want to buy a car. You have £100k in cash. The sort of person with £100k in cash is unlikely to find running anything this side of a Veyron particularly troublesome. Buy what you want.
But, generally, yes. Unless you love cars so much that you are prepared to make a few sacrifices in order to run one you really want then your average £10k car buyer probably doesn't have the spare cash to throw at cars to make buying, say, a 2002 M5 or something a sensible idea. Which is why most £10k car buyers end up with something newer.
This is of course partly why things like XJR's get so cheap - they fall into a point in the market where nobody wants them - anyone who can afford to keep them can just buy a newer one so the demand for the older ones literally falls off a cliff. It is when this happens that the more savvy but budget orientated enthusiast can pick one up - instead of buying an £8k car he can buy a £5k car with a big pile of change to run it..
Lots of people adopt your attitude, assume its all hype and buy one anyway. This is why most of them are trashed piles of rubbish owned by a succesion of people who simply couldnt afford to keep them. Though as pointed out above Jaguars don't tend to attract these type of owners as they are far too busy seeing how much BMW M3 Innit they can scrape together for 20p.
Obviously if you cant afford a 2 year old or newer super saloon you should never ever consider buying an older one as every single one of them will surely bankrupt you
Useful.