LiQUiD iCE

Ah that makes sense. The CSR didn't tell her she could purchase extra miles either which would have been nice to know. You'd think the CSR would know these kinds of things but I guess like many CSR's ... they're probably minimum wage paid and mostly clueless people answering phones and reading pre-written answers from a book or making things up when the answer isn't in the book

webguy330i

...and the fact that it's more lucrative for them to charge you after the fact.

Some leasing companies do not allow a pre-pay during the lease term, however afaik Honda Finance does.

PilotKD

When you lease, you are basically paying for the depreciation of the car over the term, plus interest (money factor). The depreciation is what you bought the car for (cap cost) minus the residual value. So, if you got the car for $31,000 and residual is $18,000, you're paying off $13,000+tax+interest over 36, 42, 48, etc... months. Residual value is X percentage of MSRP, not what u got the car for. MSRP is $33,465 with destination. Lets say after a 48mo/48k mile lease, Honda says residual is 58% of MSRP. That comes out to $19,409.70. This is simple math and if your dealer is telling you the residual is anything else but that EXACT number above, they're lying. The lower the residual, obviously the more your monthly payment is going to be. Now residuals change every so often. I'm not sure if it's monthly or every for months, but if you get a lease quote today and Honda comes out with new residuals for the S2000 tomorrow, the monthly payment is going to go up, unless they will adjust cap cost to keep it the same (I doubt it). What's BS is that car manufactures constantly update residuals to increase lease payments because to them an '05 sitting in the showroom in Jan '05 is worth less than the same car sitting in the showroom in Aug '04 while dealers sell the car for the same price. You have to explain to them that it works both ways. You see, to most dealers, the car is worth EXACTLY the same amount it was when it rolled off the truck, but at the same time, you're paying monthly payments on a car that Honda says is worth less than it was yesterday. Makes a lot of sense, huh?

Money factor is just interest and you really can't control it because it depends on American Honda Finance's mood and your credit score.

It's obvious that the best cars to lease are cars that retain their value. The S2000 is pretty good, as just about all Acuras and Hondas are. That's why you can lease Lexus, Benz, BMW's, etc... at fairly low monthly payments considering they are $40k+ cars. If you go to lease a Hyundai, I bet you can't get a Tiburon for much under $350 a month, no money down on a 4 year lease because they are worth jack squat at the end of the term.

Another thing you need to do is review all the numbers when you go into that little room with the finance guy to sign the final paperwork because numbers can mysteriously increase as they "adjust" things and hope you're not paying attention. When I leased mine, my residual value ended up being about $600 less on the paperwork than the salesman told me. Well, it was a matter of $15-20 a month difference in the monthly payment that we had agreed upon. So, I brought it to their attention and had it changed. There are tons of numbers on the final paperwork, so review them all! What was really funny was that they ended up giving me about $750 more for my trade in than we agreed upon. Of course, I mistakenly didn't catch that and bring it to their attention. Oops!

There are other things like Acquisition Fees (BS IMHO) and Disposition Fees (more BS IMHO) and they tend to conveniently leave them out of the discussion and then you find out later you owe Honda $350 after the term. I don't have a disposition fee in my contract, but sometimes they do.

S2k03

I would not lease the car. What I would do is shop around at your bank and check out how many months you can drag the payments out. I would see how much I really don't mind paying for the car and check to see if extra-long time financing might be an option (ex. 72 month) The interest should be lower then in a lease and you have the option to sell when ever you want with out any penalties, which sometime come with leases as well as no mileage restrictions. 400 per month is definately wishfull thinking.