I just got back from the dealer and they ran some numbers for me. W/ 1000 down, a 4 year lease on the RS was around 380ish. However, 1000 down w/ 5 year finance was 350/month ish.

THey said its because of "pure pricing" and their "money factor"

Does this make sense, or is this BS? I haven't looked up what the "money factor" is yet.

I'm asking because I leased my 2k1 IS300, 32,000 car, for $423 a month. I would expect a car that is almost half the price to be a bit cheaper when leasing.

 

I happen to work at a bank and have a lot of experince with loans. What was the APR for the lease, and what was the apr for financing?

 

4 year leases are very uncommon. I doubt they would be very favorable because of the unknown residual value, which scion has no doubt pegged in their favor.

 

as i'm sure you know, leasing a car is generally less expensive monthly because you are only paying a portion of the car's value over the term of the lease, before turning it back in.

the "residual" is the portion of the sale value of the car that you are not paying in your lease terms (thus cheaper payments).

you would be required to refinance the car to pay that residual if you elected to keep the car or just turn it in.

so, in your instance, either the lease interest rate was higher than the purchase interest rate or the residual was set very low so that you were almost paying full price in the lease.

the two loan packages should not have been close.

remember, at the end of a purchase, you own the car....at the end of a lease, you have not paid for the entire value of the car and do not own it. you have merely paid for a portion of the car's total value and still owe the remaining portion to own it. the numbers should not have come out that way. the lease was a bad deal. the purchase sounds better, imo.

 

That's what I understand also. I figured since these cars seem to hold their value, it would have a high residual thus making the portion I pay over the lease period less in turn lowering my payments.

I"ll have to check the details next week and see how they are trying to screw me.

 

the residual is fluid, meaning they can set it wherever they want. it is based upon a "perceived" value of the car at the end of the lease. i think you are getting screwed on the interest rate. they can't mess with the residual that much. i bet you are getting a better interest rate with the purchase.

 

The residual at the end of the 4 year lease is $7,360
The money factor is .00300 which equals about 7.2%

They guy ended up quoting me wrong...he came back w/ these numbers:

$315/month 4 year lease
$355/monty 60-month finance

No wonder people are going for the GM/Ford cars, etc. Its hard to pass up 0 down, 0% interest, etc. This is ridiulous. Even w/ "perfect" credit, the best interest rate you can get is 5.4%?? Thats crazy.

Anyway, do those numbers seem "normal"? They do to me, seeing when I financed my 99 civic SI at around 18k, my payments were about $380

 

i don't know because i don't know the total price of the car, but that number seems reasonable with $1,000.00 down.

obviously, the total cost of the purchase is $21,300.00 ($355.00 x 60), but it is better than the lease because the total cost of the lease is $22,480.00+ to keep the car ($315.00 x 48 plus the $7,360.00 balloon payment)or you could just pay the $15,120.00 lease and turn it in, but you've got nothing to show for that, just an expensive rental.