BW Advice: negotiating car lease terms
- Thread starter NickleDimer
- Start date
I would consider maybe Ford. I have had good a good Ford or two. Everything else seems like rubbish unless it's a pickup truck.
I never understand this logic. Who wants to pay $550 a month for their car? If it's stolen or you wreck it's that why you have insurance. If you have money to put down, put it down. If you're a broke cheek then you dont have that choice.
So you don't understand the difference between giving the dealer money up front or over the course of the lease/sale? Some people pay cash. Some finance. Different strokes. Let's say you buy car and they gave you .9% financing. It could make sense to put less than 10% down on the car due to that rate. Why? Because the monthly payment is irrelevant to some.
Last edited:
I'm not talking about buying. I'm talking about leasing. When you wreck a leased car, the insurance company pays the value of the car to the dealer. You don't get any money. You are out whatever you paid on the lease so far, and you have to go buy or lease another car. If you put 5 grand down on a lease and the car is totaled or stolen in month 3, you are out a lot more money than if you put zero down and had a hundred dollar higher monthly payment. The dealer will fudge the numbers anyway so that the total money out of your pocket at the end of the lease, regardless of the down payment, is about the same. It makes no difference. Who cares if your lease is $550/month if you save 5 grand down? You can pay for almost a year of the lease with the money you were going to throw away on a down payment.
Buying is a different story. Cash money, homie.
Will you consider buying Armenian?
There actually appears to have been an Armenian car company at one time, called ErAZ.
ADP, i've only leased two cars but one thing i've noticed is its better if you stay with one brand instead of moving around...seems like they love to throw incentives at you to stay with them when your lease is up. Do you agree?
I ended up switching to save money on the monthly when baby WC came but would've gotten a great deal if i had stayed..just not enough in the monthly. If I could've predicted the future I felt i should have stayed with a brand that i would kept renewing with.
I ended up switching to save money on the monthly when baby WC came but would've gotten a great deal if i had stayed..just not enough in the monthly. If I could've predicted the future I felt i should have stayed with a brand that i would kept renewing with.
I hear you but I have also never leased. Always financed. I drive almost 15K a year. Leasing really isn't an option for me. If I was I would do it.
Absolutely. To the point you shouldn't have to put any money down each time you flip your car or pay any lease termination fees. Obviously they try to amortize them over the course of the lease but that's the beauty of a pull through program. When I had my Mercedes I would flip out between 27-30nths because they always had monthly incentives. My guy knew what I wanted and when the incentives were right he would call me and flip me into a new car at a good rate. He sells a car, a get a new car and everybody won. He does the same thing for my wife on her SUV's. Usually the nicer the car the better the incentive programs and pull through programs.
Directed at me, yes. My wife's SUV has a third row. She refused to ever get a minivan.
Yeah. And we don't have one. None of our family is local, so driving to visit family is a shitshow. Have only driven smaller sedans my whole life. Being able to fully extend my legs will be a welcome change.
Honestly, if your wife doesn't care, get a minivan. We rented one last year in Florida and with 3 kids it was very convenient. Especially if your wife has to put multiple little ones in car seats. Get the Honda or Toyota.
I did that with Cadillac. They wanted to keep me and I got an ATS, 12k miles a year, for $350 a month with a grand down (first month, tags and title, and a little extra in there).
For this reason I will never drive another car/sedan again. Just sitting in one feels foreign to me.
F this. Car guy all the way here. We have a baby coming soon and I am dreading this seeming requirement to own a giant heavyonstrosity once you have kids. Maybe I will get one for my wife so that I can keep driving a car.
ND, any update? You seem like a Honda CRV kind of guy.
No progress. I am sick and don't feel like dealing with it right now.
I have always had small sedans, starting with an 1986 Escort. Might as well get an SUV now. The gas mileage difference isn't night and day like it used to be. I don't drive high miles anyway. Comfort is much better. The Mrs. has one and I don't mind it.
I have always had small sedans, starting with an 1986 Escort. Might as well get an SUV now. The gas mileage difference isn't night and day like it used to be. I don't drive high miles anyway. Comfort is much better. The Mrs. has one and I don't mind it.
Financing for cars is not a slam dunk as it is for mortgages given (assuming just personal use) there's no tax benefit, and the terms are so much shorter. Puts leases on par with financing as an option, and makes paying all cash up front make sense in a lot of cases if buying suits you better than leasing. With rates being what they are (and still are despite Fed rhetoric), some of these financing "deals" really aren't that great. Below 1% is good, 100-150 bps not bad, but once you get closer to 2% or more the calculus changes substantially IMO when you're talking about a 3- or 5-year loan.
As for "how do you only drive 8k/year" try living a little closer to not only your place of business but also a major metro area, and have more than one car in a family. I'm in that ballpark and drive to work every day.
As for "how do you only drive 8k/year" try living a little closer to not only your place of business but also a major metro area, and have more than one car in a family. I'm in that ballpark and drive to work every day.
On the crossover point, drove a Mercedes GLK 350 for 4+ years and enjoyed it. Drove like a car, although having the SUV-like body on top did make it a little stiff, usually didn't come into play much when driving with kids anyway. Held up very well.
Can't second the 3 kids point though at least for that particular crossover, would not be big enough... got a new car when a 3rd was on the way.
Can't second the 3 kids point though at least for that particular crossover, would not be big enough... got a new car when a 3rd was on the way.
I bought the Macan. It's amazing. I also like the Mercedes and if I wanted American the Ford one is a good car.
The Macan has a nice amount of get up and go. It doesn't handle like a Porsche but it sure gets off the line like one, which many of the vehicles in this category do not.
I've driven it. Fine is a good word for it. Most Porsches handle exceptionally well. I think it is the best among the compact crossovers that I drove when I was looking at them in December. Good choice if you're going with a vehicle of this ilk.
I decided to go mid sized, so probably a GLE. Biggest problem with the GLE is the Macan's best feature: 0-60 time. I don't drive enough to justify the AMG, so it won't have any zip. A total grocery getter. I have a Z3 and a 335xi so I can drive those on the occasions when I want to get somewhere in a hurry, I guess. Truthfully, I like many of the compacts and mid sizes, but don't love any of them.
I'm not making that "job creator" money, and I'm not a drag racer wannabe so I'll probably get something bland and cheap.
I developed an app with Shoop's help that makes car buying recommendations based on posts on 4.6. It says you should buy an MDX.
I have driven two Grand Cherokees and a Land Cruiser for a combined decade. I know how it feels to drive an SUV. I've also daily driven an A4, an S4, and a 3-series, and I much prefer what it feels like to drive those. I am 5'10", so a pretty average sized guy, and I have never had a problem fitting in any car.
One caution about crossovers is that they have the potential to be the worst of both worlds. I am currently stuck in that hell with my daily driver, an Infiniti EX35 (now called the QX50). It is, without question, the worst car I have ever owned (although it has never had a mechanical problem or other issue). It handles and rides like an SUV -- slow, tons of body roll in the turns, heavy, and the AWD means push understeer whenever you get a teeny bit quick in the turns. I believe a Ford F-150 handles better than this car, and probably goes faster too. The giant balloon tires certainly don't help. The transmission has a manual mode, but I think it takes approximately 1 year to receive your command and actually change gears. "Sport mode" just means that it downshifts 1 gear from where you usually would be, which means that the transmission only effectively has 4 gears since it will never go into 5th in sport mode.
It also has the benefit of having literally zero cargo space. The back seat is slammed against the back of the front seats, and I can barely fit an adult in there. I have a child seat in there now in preparation for the new baby, and in order for it to fit I basically need to move the passenger seat all the way forward, making it unusable. There is OK space behind the rear seats, but none of it is usable because the rear hatch is so small that you can't slide anything in there. I guess you can stack some luggage. I bought a snowblower for my dad for christmas a few years ago, and couldn't fit it so I had to take it out of the box and put all of the pieces in the back of my car separately. Trip to the garden store in the spring for some new planters? Nope, no way. I took one, and we had to go get my wife's 328 to take the other one (which fit with equal aplomb).
I have it in this color, with these nasty wheels. The only time you see these on the roads, they are being driven poorly by an asian woman.
If you want a third row to carry people, that's one thing, but if you want a crossover to actually carry stuff around, think about just getting a full sized SUV. I still think these things are for suckers who just want jacked up cars so that they can "sit high" and "see the road," which has never made sense to me.
You can't beat Toyota dependability!
Mini SUVs are a waste of time for the reasons that Merc stated. Go full size SUV or stick with a bigger sedan.
Mini SUVs are a waste of time for the reasons that Merc stated. Go full size SUV or stick with a bigger sedan.
