thank you so much all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i'm come back with a new car soon , i hope!!!!!!!1

 

webguy, your acquisition fee is damn high. Did Hond raise it recently? When I leased mine last January, acquisition was $495 (and I'm not talking about destination).

As for repairs, Honda provides a guide when you lease a car that explains acceptable damage upon return and from what I'm seeing as I look at mine, you don't have to worry about every little ding and dent. It cost me $45 to take a ding out of my 1/4 panel using "Paintless Dent Removal" and the only reason I got it fixed is because I'm a fanatic with my car (aren't we all). Not because I was worried about them charging me for it when give it back.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both leasing and financing. One of the major disadvantages of leasing is that you're in a contract that you can't get out of that easily without hurting your credit. You'll also pay a bit more interest on a lease, but it all depends on how much you put down on a finance. Other than that, you're driving around in a brand new car with very little money down and a lower monthly that if you financed. I've financed a few cars before I leased my S and the way I look at it is; a car depreciates. Period. And unless you have the cash to walk in a buy the car outright and pay no interest and have no monthly payment, you are still essentially renting the car from the bank. The car is STILL not yours until you pay it off and again, if you don't put a lot of money down you will have to finance it over 36, 48 or 60 months to keep the monthly payment down as low as a comparable lease. For a comparable monthly payment of about $420, you'd have to put $15k down on a $31k car with 6% sales tax over a 48 month finance vs putting $1500 down on a lease over the same term. In the end, you may break even on the financed S if you're able to sell it for $17k or so. If not, you put $15k down and payed about $2k interest over 4 years. With the lease, you'll pay about $4k interest over 4 years, but you didn't have to give the bank $15k. That $15k can do more for you in investments than it will into something that depreciates. For some people, they don't have that kind of money up front to begin with, so leasing is attractive.

As said before, you CAN negotiate the selling price of the car and you should not walk into a dealer talking monthly payments or leasing/buying BS anyway. You talk about what they are willing to sell you the car for. Act as though you have $31,000 in your pocket and that's what you want the car for, period. Use a lease calculator before hand ( http://www.edmunds.com/new/2005/honda/s200...or.tab.1.Honda* ), know what you want to put down on the car, print it out and take it with you. There should be no BS involved when leasing a car. However, it is much easier to get ripped off when leasing than financing because there are many more variables that the dealer can change to increase your monthly payment and you'll never know otherwise. Find out what the money factor is and the current residuals and that's really all you need to get an accurate lease payment. When I did this, my monthly payment would up being within a dollar of what I calculated before hand. I leased my car in Jan '04 for $31,200+500 (Acquistion) and 7% sales tax of $2184). I put $3350 down with first months payment and I'm paying $349 a month for 48 months/15k miles a year. My money factor was .000215 and my residual is $17,300. I wind up paying about $3500 interest on the car over 4 years vs about $2000 if I would have financed with $15k down, 4.9% interest over the same term, but of course I didn't have to put the extra $12,000 down up front. At the time I was saving for a wedding and honeymoon, so I wasn't about to drop that kind of money into a new car only to barely break even 4 years down the road. A car is a luxury item, not an investment, unless of course you buy it and leave it in your garage for 30 years.

You're in the right place at the right time. I'm sure you can get a good deal on an S2000 in New Jersey in December. I leased mine in Atlanta, GA in January and still got a pretty good deal. Who the hell is going to buy a sports car in the winter time in Alpine, NJ? Check and see if you can find a few left over '04's around. Whether or not driving an S around Northern Jersey in the winter time is a good idea or not, well that's an entirely seperate thread all together (born and raised in NNJ). It'll be interesting.

 

[QUOTE=S2oooNvegas,Dec 19 2004, 02:37 AM] LOL.

 

Are you crack?

Invoice is $29,640 on the '05 plus $515 destination. So, a lease on $30,055+500 acqisition fee, for 60 months, 12k miles a year, no money down, .00023 money factor, would be right around $400 a month with 6% sales tax. If you were paying $550 a month for a 60 month lease with the above variables, the car was about $37,500.

Whadda ya know? Leasecompare.com just gave me a quote of $397 a month, no tax, but based on $32,623+500 acqisition, which is about $1000-1500 more than what you can really get the car for. Just for giggles, I told Leasecompare.com that I wanted to put down $1500 on their $32,623 MY05 to make it similar to getting the car for $31,000. 60 months, 12k miles a year and they gave me $356 a month, plus tax. Tax is about $20-25 a month, so figure $380.

Here is some reading material:

http://beta.s2ki.com/forums/index.php?show...229942&hl=lease
http://beta.s2ki.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=160758
http://beta.s2ki.com/forums/index.ph...pic=140955&hl=

These are old posts, but they'll give you an idea what you should be paying on a lease.

 

Yeah that's just one of the ways leasecompare.com collects a little change. They also make some money on the money factor (i.e. dealership backend ) but it's all good in the long run. Honda Finance is currently at $595 acquisition. But $795 isn't too terrible, considering BMW is $695. It varies ya know?

There's also a $350 disposition fee, not sure how Honda handles that. It was the same for BMW last I checked.

You make some good points btw, cheers! It's damn near impossible to win the lease vs. buy argument. It's all too subjective to some folks, but really it's plain as day.

Being in Georgia, do you have to pay sales tax on the adjusted cap cost or something? Pretty much everywhere else you only pay tax on the term depreciation (usage) of the vehicle.

 

Getting a car at invoice is the first step. Avoiding a a trade-in is second. Once you have the car at the lowest price, your credit and leasing terms (how many years and miles per year) will determine the lease price. Remember, that the miles are less expensive up front than they are if you go over your contract.

I pay $485.00 with 15k miles a year for 48 months. I put very little if any down, and rolled 2k over from my WRX that I traded in. I'd think if you got the car at invoice, went with 12k/ 48 months, with no trade in, you'd be pretty close to $400.00.

If your budget is so tight that $50.00 or so is going to make or break you, you may want to reconsider until you have more dough. There's always incidentals, and you want to be able to address them right away and not be cheap with the car, and you want the car to be your slave, not the other way around.

 

My reply was a quote that said you'd be lucky to pay somewhere under 500 a month for the lease. All I'm saying is if you're paying $500/month for the car, you could almost finance the car for that much.

It doesn't sound like leasing the car will actually cost you $500/month ... but thats what S2oooNvegas was saying.

 

I posted threads made by actual salesman from dealers showing their lease specials above.

The first one shows that you can get the car at invoice, but the money factor was pretty high, which raised the monthly payment. You can see the difference between the first and second thread. The selling price in the second one is higher, but the monthly payment is lower. Go figure.

 

Hey I have a question for you leasing experts. My g/f leased a '05 RSX-S and she has 12k mi / year on the car. If she drives 15k mi this year and then drives only 9k next year so she totals 24k mi over 2 years, will she still pay a penalty? The Honda Finance CSR said that she'd pay 0.15c/mile in mileage penalties after the first year.

Like I said before, I have almost no clue how leasing works, and going to Honda's Finance website and reading through the leasing FAQs and stuff didn't help at all. What do they do, make you drag your car in every year and jot down the mileage or something? Just didn't make much sense to me, but maybe the CSR doesn't know what she's talking about either.

 

The overage charges for mileage are only incurred at the end of the lease when the car is turned in. Typically these end-of-lease charges are higher per mile than if you pre-paid or paid during the lease term. She will have no problem doing 15k this year and 9k next. There is no yearly mileage "check up".