Here are 15 luxury used cars from just £1,000 that aren't German

Snapping at the heels of Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Porsche for years, but never quite toppling them, Jaguar is perhaps the de facto example of non-German luxe to British buyers. The fact the brilliant XE made barely a ripple in the vast pond of 3 Series sales proves how much Jaguar needed an enormous rethink – which it’s duly getting – with an incoming GT that appears to have pinched some of the swagger from the last-gen XJ. A good thing indeed.

But if you can’t wait for (or indeed afford) the new-age Jaguar, here’s a well-kept example of the old guard for a modest eleven grand. And it’s an XJ Supersport at that, replete with a rip-snorting supercharged 5.0-litre V8 sending an almighty 503 horsepower solely to its rear axle.

The car that gave BMW and Mercedes a good ol’ scare, there’s a good chance every 7 Series and S-Class that followed the launch of the Lexus brand in 1989 has taken anxious inspiration from it.

Most specifically from the astutely screwed together LS, which did for the engineering of big limos what the Honda NSX did for the useability of supercars. Namely giving them a big old fright but vastly sharpening their game as a result. Modern LSs fall comfortably under £10,000, but we simply must indulge the nostalgia of this mid-nineties Mk1. In suitably nineties two-tone brown-gold…

Suffice to say Volvo is now an SUV brand with a side hustle in estates, but a decade or more ago it felt vehemently the opposite. The V90 may prove to be the last of the titanic Swedish wagons, and in this Cross Country form it’s ready to adopt the workhorse role many modern SUVs endure each and every day. The XC will skim over rough lanes with minimal fuss, soak up school run parking prangs with a touch of class and look so much calmer and less aggressive than the Teutonic normcore as it does so. For many, that’ll be a turn-off. But you’re smart enough to know there’s a more righteous way…

Sweden used to be an ‘alternative luxe’ force, with Volvo and Saab appearing more collaborators than rivals in the fight against samey looking corporate car parks. Sadly the miserly hand of General Motors ownership robbed us of an esoteric Saab future; this is one of the small handful of second-gen 9-5s that made it market, a car that hinted at a new age but ultimately served as Saab’s eulogy. This one’s even painted in funereal black.

Utilising a petrol turbo engine that’s stirred by a six-speed manual gearbox, it’s a slice of another generation in so many ways. And a bit of a bargain at under six grand with modest mileage. Though good luck sourcing spares…

Dive a little further up the Saab 9-5’s family tree and you find the handsome 9000, a luxe saloon that shared its platform with the Fiat Croma, Lancia Thema and this chiselled specimen, the Alfa Romeo 164. It was the demonstration of ‘safety in numbers’ for taking on the might of Mercedes et al.

The so-called Type Four underpinnings were claimed to save millions of hours of development time and were lauded long before the vast platform sharing we’re now accustomed to from the likes of Stellantis and the Volkswagen Group. The Alfa’s the best to look at, of course, and this particular example – described as ‘possibly the best 164 out there’ – comes with the sonorous, 24-valve 3.0-litre V6 that truly belongs in an Alfa of this era. Even if it’s also a Saab.

A mere grand more than our Nineties Alfa Romeo buys a Noughties Bentley – and one with twice the cylinder count. Up front sits the 6.0-litre twin-turbo W12 synonymous with 21st century Bentleys until very recently; yes, this one does mine some German engineering knowhow – owing to Volkswagen’s acquisition of Bentley, without which we’d have no Flying Spur – but Crewe’s trick has always been integrating its parts-sharing beneath a generous, unmistakably British layer of genuine luxury. The greatest value for money on this list, perhaps…

There’s a long list of cars with somewhat brave badging. Some admirably live up to their names (observe the Skoda Superb), others less so (witness the Mitsubishi Carisma). This one probably falls in the hinterland between the two, demonstrating much of the tech and engineering nous as the Lexus further up this page, but without leaving anything like the same legacy – nor commanding anything other than bargain pricing in the classifieds. With ‘Super Handling All-Wheel Drive’, a VTEC V6 and a host of then-premium equipment for just three grand, we dare you to spend any less on this much car.

Another car that must live or die by its naming philosophy. But with 470bhp and 443lb ft from the glorious V12 engine tucked under that long, sumptuous bonnet – and its resulting five-second sprint to 60mph and 188mph top speed – Rapide this car certainly is. Its design has aged exquisitely too, now arguably even more handsome than its contemporary DB9 sibling courtesy of its extended wheelbase, a necessity to slot in two more doors and more commodious rear seats. Is there a prettier way of ferrying four folks around in utmost luxury? For a meagre £34k, almost certainly not…

Think ‘alternative luxe’ and the French often bombilate around the fringes, flailing their arms offering something truly arresting. In their pomp, Citroen, Peugeot and Renault would simultaneously occupy the niche corner of the 5 Series class, offering a better-looking, softer-riding, quicker-depreciating substitute to dull old normality.

One of the weirdest looking (but now ultimately charming) of them all is the Renault Vel Satis, an only slightly more conventional sibling to the contemporary Avantime. Not many for sale in Britain, it has to be said, but thankfully plenty of ‘em reside on the continent commanding as little as £1,000. Even with a V6.

Eurostar over, LeShuttle back – who’s in?

Why DS even bothered offering its halo saloon to anyone outside of the French presidential team, we’ll never know. We’re mighty glad they did, though: the 9 is a handsome slice of car and its jewelled details, including individually swivelling Active LED Vision headlights (an overt nod to the original Citroen DS), all stay just the right side of chintzy. And as tradition dictates, it rides flipping well. Brand new, prices could soar past seventy grand (yes, really) for a natively 1.6-litre, four-cylinder saloon car with especially nice trim. Used you’ll pay a teeny fraction of that, even only a handful years on from its inglorious retirement.

If you were to guess the most expensive car on this list, you might not expect the Genesis to outmuscle the Aston and Bentley. But then it offers more than a whiff of the latter, utilising some former Bentley design folk for its smart, three-box saloon design while its winged emblems may just convince the non-enthusiast crowd your car is from Crewe, not Korea.

Sold in petrol and dual-motor electric form, it’s the latter we have here for a smidge over £40k. Not bad when it was registered just two years and 5,000 miles ago with an RRP nearly twice as plump.

Comfy to occupy, slick to drive and with years of its official warranty left to run, it’s a good car, this – providing you’re resilient enough for yet more depreciation.

Genesis’ actual genesis in the UK is this, the Hyundai Genesis. Yep, no hiding the engineering roots of all the cars which followed it, but then unlike Infiniti, Genesis takes no shame in how much of its tech and engineering knowhow comes from its wider, more mainstream ownership.

This slightly bland, V6-powered saloon is no all-time great – certainly not in a list packed with design chutzpah like this one – but you can bet it’ll be dependable and slink neatly under the radar, if that’s your thing. Over a decade ago, we debated the merits of a £50k Hyundai. Now those are ten-a-penny and swipe rather a lot of TopGear.com awards each year. And the car that first sailed those waters is now a quarter of the price…

Another example of mainstream names going luxe – and another unconventionally handsome car that you just know is going to be fastidiously engineered enough to survive whatever oblivion awaits us mere humans. Less than five grand gets you a 2.5-litre V6, of which only a wee handful survive in the UK. Buy it for the rarity or, like nigh on all Nineties Mazdas (NA MX-5, FD RX-7, MX-6, the oddly beautiful 323F hatch…) its appeal might simply draw down to the fact it looks damn good.

If anyone knows how to define ‘alternative luxe’, certainly when it comes to material choices, it’s the Americans. While if we endeavoured to tot up the number of times Cadillac tried to launch in the UK, we’d waste the rest of our working day. This STS was spun from attempt number 434 (approx.) when a bunch of cars aimed to take a chunk out of the established German dominance with their steering wheels installed on the right-hand side.

There was a petite 3 Series sized one – the BLS – to properly garner sales volume (it didn’t…) which the keener of mind may remember from old Top Gear telly and its celebration of local radio stations. Only five of the larger STS saloon remain in Britain, according to the ad, and this one boasts a hulking great V8 and one-of-one red paint for its seven grand.

Alright, technically this one is a little bit German. Quite a lot German, actually, given it was built in Rüsselsheim (famously in Germany) by (famously German) carmaker Opel. But its spirit surely fits the non-conformist sort we’re seeking here, right?

The Omega tapped right into the same leftfield nook of the market as the Saabs and Alfas of this world and was quite a hoot to drive, by all accounts: a smartly creased, rear-driven successor to the Carlton and its lairy Lotus offshoot. Performance won’t stir up sensationalist newspaper headlines here, though its 24-valve, 2.6-litre V6 is still good for 170 unruffled horsepower and a 142mph top speed. With under 20,000 miles and a truly enviable service history it possesses a heck of a lot of ‘undercover chase car’ vibes for your £6,500…