It seems a lot of people "own" their S2000s here. Anyone here lease? I've never leased a car in my life and I'm looking for opinions. I have no worries about aging with an S2000 except the soft top/rear window might go.

I think there are only two reasons to lease:

1. The car is for business, and you can write off the lease payments as a business expense instead of depreciating a car that you bought outright; or

2. You don't have enough cash to make a down payment, but you do have enough for a deposit on a lease.

In case #1, the car becomes cheaper to lease than buy. In case #2, the lease is more expensive than buying but the extra cost makes it possible to have the car at all.

But maybe there are leases that are actually cheaper on the merits than buying. Anyone seen one?

Or my two reasons to lease:

1. I absolutely want something new when I am done.
2. I drive my car to the absolute limit, and I don't want to be responsible for passing this car along to someone else if it has a slight tranny/ engine problem. A few miles down the road, if something breaks, I don't want the new owner to come after me. Bottom line- I make cars into problems, and I don't want the car to be my problem when I'm done with it.

The car companies have learned their lesson on leasing.
They are getting hammered with used 2-3 year old vehicles that they had to take back because they over inflated the lease end values.
Go to any large ford dealer and look at the number of 97-98 Explorers with 36K on them and you will see what I mean.

Leasing does make sense if you are indeed self employed and are able to write it off. However, uncle sam wont let you write 100% of it off...ie he will say "you drive the car to and from work, thats personal use" so you will only be able to write off 80%. In my case I leased my winter car and bought my S2000, that way I can write off 100% of the Lease car and when Uncle Sam says..."you drive it back and fourth..." I can say, Ok, then lets write off some of the HOnda!!! In otherwords if you have both a business vehicle and pleasure (s2000) it can actually be easier....

Leasing makes for a lower monthly, but not by much, and at the end of the lease,,,,you have nothing for the $ you spent.

I bought, but I tend to keep cars a long time. To give some perspective, my last car was an '89 Civic Si hatchback, bought new and sold to a private party with 135k miles on the odometer before buying the '00 S2K.

well, my wife drives 2 miles to and from work, so i figure leasing will be cheaper (in terms of the money we have to put out) for 3 years, and it'll be fun to get a new car every 3 years.

I like the idea of leasing too. But since the S2000 has such high resale value (as of right now) and that it might no longer be produced after 2002 maybe it's better to buy?

my g/f leases her 2001 BMW 325i.

She wanted to get out of her 10%apr loan (doesn't matter how rich you are and how substantial your assets are, but if you don't work, you get a high APR) on her 3.2CL-S (also, it wasn't a "her" kind of car). Anyhow, she had always wanted a BMW and loved the feel of the 325i... Except for its overboosted steering, its fun to drive, albeit a bit slow for my tastes... stability is incredible...

anyways, with the lease, she gets 15000 miles a year (45k over the duration of a 3k lease) and BMW has the first 3 years of maintainance paid (except for tires). So, aside from gas and insurance, the car costs only the monthly payment to drive.

Now, the residual value added to the amount paid in is actually less than MSRP+interest (at 10%)... But the only real advantage of a lease is that she can get out of the car at the end of 3 years no questions asked.

Right now, depending on finances for her, she'd like to try a DIFFERENT 3 series in 3 years. Possibly even custom order one. The 325i she picked is a real "girls" car IMO. No sport package, no manual trans, but REAL leather (optional) and other stuff I could care less about :)

but I digress... anyhow, she'd like a little more power, so most likely, in 3 years she can get a 330i.

The advantage of leasing for most people is that in an example, you could finance an Accord for 4something a month to own in 3 years, or you could use the same amount of $ to lease the Bimmer. Then, at the end of the lease, either turn around and lease another new one (lose all the equity built up in the current car), walk away completely (again, losing equity), or third option is that if you really like the car, then you could finance the residual value...

I guess the idea is that by the end of 3 years, you have more money that you didnt have at the start of the lease, so whereas you couldn't afford to buy the $35000 bimmer, you could lease it, and then finance the residual value...

As for the S2000, I own it. Only because I traded in my 99 Vette (owned that) and didn't want a car payment while I focus on school...

I have my ITR (yeah yeah I know it's an S2K board :D )on a Novated Lease (ie thru salary sacrifice). It costs me 60% of the actual cost of owning one of these because of the tax saving. (It's all legal and perfectly normal :D )

i analyzed the decision and found the cash purchase to make more financial sense for my situation...
paid cash