Purchase

Of course it is a risk - one could also say "adventure", to buy a 43-year-old car one has never set eyes upon personally via ebay in the USA. Fotos only give a vague impression and can hide the real condition of the car: what may look wonderful from a distance of five meters can turn out to be a disaster from a distance of 50 centimeters. And the technical side may be even less predictable: spare parts can be very expensive, especially for a relatively rare car like an MK IX.

Furthermore, the description can be faulty or incomplete, and of course everybody wants to sell their car at the best price possible, so sometimes problem areas are not mentioned. And for us Germans, the Americans do have a certain tendency to exaggerate.

In our case, the car was described by Kruse International, a large well-known Oldtimer-Dealer and Auctioneer in the USA, as a car in "excellent condition". The owner seemed to have listed some imperfections: the cooling water gauge, heating, odometer, both clocks not working, rear spats only treated with primer, etc. Of course there was also a positive list with all the things that had been renovated since 1997 as well as a short history of the vehicle.

In any case, one felt relatively well informed, and Kruse has a good reputation among classic car enthusiasts, even though some clients had given them a negative feedback at ebay...

What one could easily see from the fotos was that the car was basically still original, unchanged and complete. It seemed as if there would be little one would need to renovate in order to be able to drive it on German roads.

Thus we decided to bid for this car, very much still aware of the story unknown ending that this may become. The offers had already been given - the last one being above 8.000 USD, and the reserve price was not yet met. I then entered 10.001 USD, which resulted in the highest bid with exactly 10.000 USD. Since no more offers were made, we became proud owners of the Jaguar MK IX with the VIN 793734 BW on September 16th, 2003.

Payment was then handled professionally by Kruse International. Having been given the necessary bank account details, the money was easily transferred online. The equivalent of 10.000 USD in Euro were automatically booked off our bank account and the 16 Euros fee that the Deutsche Bank charged for this transfer were - for once - also reasonable. After one week, we received confirmation from Kruse that they had received the payment.