Top 10 Luxury Vehicles with the Worst Resale Value

The Lincoln Town Car is archaic by today's automotive standards, much like the Mercury Grand Marquis that shares its platform. "It doesn't reflect the needs and wants of a modern consumer anymore ***

The Mercury Grand Marquis is "a big, bulky vehicle that simply doesn't reflect trends in the current market," says Auto Appraisal Group's Larry Batton. Buyers of the Grand Marquis owners are 67 years old on average. "The market for this huge car is small and getting smaller," Batton says. ***

The X-Type has struggled since its 2002 debut. It never quite mustered the appeal and performance of more-capable competitors such as the BMW 3 Series, Infiniti G35, Lexus IS and Mercedes-Benz C-Class. ***

The current-generation S-Type debuted as a 2000 model and is near the end of its life cycle and will be replaced by an all-new sedan called the XF. Auto Appraisal Group's Batton says that residual values almost always suffer when vehicles are at the end of their life cycle as consumers gravitate to the latest and greatest offerings. ***

Reliability of Mercedes-Benz vehicles has plummeted, says Larry Batton of Auto Appraisal Group. Poor reliability erodes resale value. Mercedes execs have unofficially admitted to us that adding too much new technology without enough time to fully test it was a downfall with the E-Class and caused many of the model's widely documented problems in recent years. ***

The Lincoln MKZ (formerly the Zephyr) is based on the Mazda 6 platform. The Mazda 6 is an excellent car and so is the MKZ, but the $5,000 to $10,000 price premium for the Lincoln makes it less appealing, despite its luxury features and respectable performance. In its favor, the MKZ gets an "Excellent" predicted-reliability rating from Consumer Reports. ***

Like the larger DTS, the Cadillac STS is a solid performer and appealing in many ways. But, "American cars are having a tough moment," says Auto Appraisal Group ***

The Cadillac DTS is another solid performer marred by low residual values. Part of the problem is that, like the Lincoln Town Car and Mercury Grand Marquis on this list, the DTS is sold to fleets for use as a limo, livery cab and the like. Lots of them get pumped into the used-car market once they're retired from fleets and throw off the supply-demand ratio. ***

As we wrote in the Top 10 Luxury Vehicles with the Highest Resale Value feature, performance is a primary driver of used car values. The Ford Expedition makes this list largely because of sluggish performance compared to other big SUVs. It has a 300-hp V8, which sounds powerful, but really isn't for a vehicle that weighs well over three tons. ***

A "Poor" reliability rating from Consumer Reports sheds a negative light on this midsize SUV. In this extremely crowded and competitive segment, that can really hurt a vehicle's success. ***