Thanks for the replies (and email), everyone. Very informative and useful. At this point, I'm teetering on what to do. If I pay my value for the car, I'm going to take a loss if and when I resell it. I certainly can't pay 17,9 for a car right now, but I'd still like to find a nice '01. I guess I'll have to keep looking.

Re: low residual values... it sucks, but it's a reality of owning a car these days. It's not just the VX that has lost significant value. Look at the Ford Focus. You can get a 2002 for $6k - less than half of what it sold for new. Look at the Aztek (lol, ok, don't look at it, I know it's ugly as sin). Look at the Lotus Esprit, Corvette C5 Z06 ($25k for a 2001 !!! That was a $55k car new !!!) Qvale Mangusta <- this was over 80k new... extremely rare, and yet sells now for $40k. Honda S2000... very popular car, great performance and great name, and yet '01s sell for $16k, less than half what they cost new. I have an '01 S2000 myself.

My best guess about car values these days is that the artificially low interest rates imposed by the fed in attempts to spark the economy led to automakers being able to create a really high demand for new cars. Why would someone buy an '01 when they could get a similar '05 for the same monthly payment!?

Anyhow, thanks again for the info... I hope I find something soon!