how many of y'all been noticing over the past couple of years that value (people are actually paying) for fairly clean examples of our XJs has been steadily climbing?
I love my XJ to death....but man... if someone would be willing to give me twice what I have into a 22 year old vehicle... how much longer is that going to last? Not every classic vehicle stays "hot" in the must have collectors market forever.

 

okay... maybe it's just me.... my other thought on the topic was due to the peaked interest in clean XJs..... I hope this doesn't affect the replacement parts area for them.... as one of the reasons I keep mine around is that it's simple to work on, and parts are fairly readily available still....AND most of them are still fairly inexpensive compared to replacement parts on a much newer vehicle.

 

I'm keeping mine. It meets all my requirements for what I need it for.. The only thing that can replace it is.... another XJ.

 

So my two cents...I have owned my jeep for 23 years. Purchased it way back when for my 16 year old son. My surprise...he didn't want it.(whole other story for somewhere else), anyway I kept it. I was fortunate to be able to keep what I call "positive preventive maintenance." Simply explained, instead of car payments, I replace parts as time went on before they failed. Recently as two weeks ago I had the original tie rod ends, drag bar and ball joints replaced. 25 years and 210000 miles I felt it was a good idea. Don't get me wrong, I have also had the surprise breakdowns along the way. The only major one was a few months ago when the transmission started to howl like a coyote at the moon... It is my daily driver, though now I put maybe 10000 miles per year, but every 3000 miles it gets an oil change, shot of grease every place a zerk is hanging out and I rotate the tires. Jeep hardly shows any wear, and I will not state how it runs as I think it is monitoring my communications...(The Jeep Jinx) --but I would not hesitate to get in it and drive it across this nation today. As for it's monetary value, to me it is priceless, and always has been. I have had people offer to buy it, but I can't replace everything that has been done to it, it's history and the cost per mile that it costs today. In my thoughts the only time things have monetary value is when you plan to sell it or claim it on insurance.

 

Clean unmodified ones are getting expensive. Once you modify them in any way, you cut your value significantly. Unmodified ones are becoming nearly non existent. Everybody buys one and then does SOMETHING to it. and once you do something irreversible, like cutting a fender, you have to find a buyer who want the fender cut in the way that you did it. A ton were lost to cash for clunkers, a ton were lost to rust, car accidents, etc. they are also truly a vehicle that you simply cannot buy anymore. The newest wrangler is a monster truck compared to an XJ, and they are only getting bigger. anything smaller is awd/front wheel drive, no low range, independent suspension, etc.

Also, think about this, They came out in the 80's, how man people were born in the late 70's - early 90's that are now in their mid 30's to early 40's who's dad's bought one, and they have fond memories of growing up in one, or had a scout leader, or some other influential person in their lives who had one, who took them camping/off roading, and now they have disposable income and time to relive that joy in their childhood? have kids of their own, and want to share those experiences with them? I know I fall in that category. My dad had an 85, and he took us EVERYWHERE in it (before it was lost to an accident where he was rear ended by an under cover cop.)



I had one previously, that my kids LOVED, and I sold it for dumb reasons, and that is 90% of the reasons I bought my current one. My kids asked me to.

this is an OLD picture:


and they bounce around in my current one as I try to get it running:

 

you make a very good point there..... once a vehicle is modified in a way that you can not put it back to 100% stock i.e just bolt on type mods... yeah... the value for the originality of it starts to suffer.

I mean it's ridiculous what kind of prices they are getting for rust free examples now.... not just asking price...but selling at 7, 8 10 grand and above for reasonably clean examples.
That's nuts.... considering that's on average at least half of what most of our XJs went for brand new 20 something years ago... And so yes that part is tempting...but I just know that if I ever sold my XJ for a reason like that I'd seriously regret doing so afterwards.
I've owned a number of vehicles over the years....and I know at the end of the day, it's just a possession...a "thing".... but for some reason it just pains me to think of selling this old thing. I honestly really don't regret selling any of the others I've had before....but the XJ is different. I always liked them and wish I had one... first time I drove one... I knew one day I would have one... a few years later...after searching...I bought the one I have now.
Sure it ticks me off occasionally, but when something does go wrong, there's a high chance that I can fix it myself.... I don't need 100K in advanced diagnostic equipment to figure it out and fix it like it seems you do for new cars these days.
Just something about that by-gone era when we didn't just throw things out... we fixed them.
Plus what else was mentioned that with these... NO car payment.... Love that!... so I figure if every few months or so, I have to sink a few bucks into keeping this 22 year old jeep going as a DD... then so be it... still a lot cheaper than a car pmt. I think it takes a special kind of person to want to drive an older vehicle ON PURPOSE. Yes I could afford to buy a newer vehicle...but I just don't want or have a real need to.