Monthly Car Lease

Car Lease Ratings, Offers and Reviews

Archive for January, 2010

Leasing Special from GM

Jan 24

Posted by Rob in Car Leasing | No Comments

Cadillac CTS Car Lease Special

CTS Car Lease Special

GM is slowly, but surely getting back into the car leasing business. The Cadillac STS scored the best car lease deal for the December, 2009 Monthly Car Lease Ratings. For January 2010, GM has added some attractive lease offers on the Buick and Chevrolet.  I thought it would be fun to feature the latest GM car leases and rate them. While it is good to see General Motors leasing cars again, I am not real crazy about their GM Loyalty program. On their top car lease deals, GM is offering an extra $1,000 off to current GM customers. While this may seem like a nice way to reward the loyalty of returning General Motors customers, what kind of message does it send to the prospective Cadillac, Chevy or Buick shoppers who are considering one of their cars for the first time? It might be enough to dissuade potential new customers from trying their cars. After all, $1,000 makes a big difference on a short lease term, which brings me to the next problem. All of the General Motors car lease specials are based on a 39 month lease term. As I've mentioned before, I'm not crazy about lease terms that go over the standard 12-month periods. When the third year (36 month) is up you will have to pay for the car's registration again, only to turn it back into the dealer 3 months later. Then, of course, you will have to pay registration on the new car you buy to replace it. Never the less, these are some pretty good car lease offers. Below, you will see how the GM Loyalty Option affects the outcome. Honors for the Best Car Lease Offer of the group belongs to the 2010 Cadillac CTS Luxury RWD Sedan with the GM Loyalty Rebate of $1,000.  As you can see, non-GM owners will have to pay an extra $1,000 down at lease signing, which results in an average monthly payment that is $28.00 higher. Based on my LVR Car Lease Ratings Formula, this drops the ranking down from excellent to fair. This is hardly a way to entice former Lexus, Acura, BMW and Mercedes owners into trying a Cadillac. Read the rest of this entry »

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Best Gas Mileage Cars to Lease

Jan 13

Posted by Rob in Car Leasing | No Comments

honda insight car lease

honda-insight-car-lease

The reason we lease cars is to enjoy low monthly payments, pay little or nothing down and to reduce or eliminate maintenance costs. In short, we lease cars to save money. There is one way to save even more money: Lease a car that gets excellent gas mileage. The EPA has released their Top-10 Gas Mileage Cars for 2009 and 2010. Unfortunately this EPA listing of Fuel Efficient cars excludes the ones that are available for leasing. Of the Top-10 of Best Gas Mileage cars listed by the EPA, many of them are hybrids which either don’t lease at all or simply don’t make very attractive lease offers. Last year, Honda surprised me one month with a Civic Hybrid lease special that blew everything else away. For $199.00 a month and $2,299 down, you could lease a Civic Hybrid rated at 40/45 MPG. I have never seen a more affordable, economical way to enjoy a quality, new car for three years. Unfortunately, lease deals like this are rarely seen on Hybrid Cars. Because Hybrids require a sophisticated battery, they are 15 – 20% more expensive than standard cars. The uncertainty of the battery’s reliability and longevity probably add to their rate of depreciation. On a Toyota Prius or Honda Civic Hybrid, the battery depreciates faster than the rest of the car. Hence, most hybrid cars just don’t lease very well – at least not yet. Read the rest of this entry »

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Best Car Lease for January 2010

Jan 7

Posted by Rob in Car Leasing | 3 Comments

Happy New Year

Best Car Lease

Best Car Lease

What is the Best Car Lease for the New Year? The best one I found is the 2010 Toyota Camry which Leases for $199.00 a month for 36-months and $1,699.00 down, including first-month payment. The Toyota Camry LE Sedan has a very good LVR of just 1.08%. This actually tops the Toyota RAV4 SUV which I raved about last month in our SUV Lease Specials for December.  This month the Toyota RAV4 lease offer is not quite as attractive. The low payment of $199.00 is the same, but an extra $500 down payment is required. For January 2010, I've rated seven cars as having excellent lease values based on the fact their Lease Value Ratio (LVR) is 1.16 or less. Notice the trend here?

  • The Toyota Camry is on top once again.
  • Low to medium-priced Japanese sedans are near the top.
  • SUV's and more expensive luxury cars like BMW and Audi are closer to the bottom.

Speaking of luxury cars, have you ever seen a worse leasing deal than the BMW 550i? $809 a month plus $6,184 down payment?  This is the kind of car lease that gives car leasing a bad name. The expensive-to-lease BMW 550i is another example of how a sagging economy has hurt. The resale values of expensive cars are not what they used to be. When they are 2-3 years old, it becomes hard to sell such an expensive car. Obviously, $61,000 cars are taking a bigger depreciation hit these days. You are probably wondering why Cadillac (last month's winner) is not on the list. Check back soon. Cadillac could end up this month's winner again. Read the rest of this entry »

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SUV Car Lease Specials

Jan 2

Posted by Rob in Car Leasing, Lease Comparison | No Comments

The Best SUV Lease

Okay, folks. Some of you suggested that I do an SUV lease special article. After looking at how sparse, few and in-between the number of decent lease deals on SUV and Crossover vehicles, I thought I would wait for the new year. The New Year is here, but the new deals are not. Below, is the Top-10 SUV Leases for last year which don't expire for another few days. Realizing, that this would be a great opportunity to see how the latest SUV deals compare for the new year, I changed my mind about publishing last year's deals. If you're reading this before January 5th, 2010 you can still take advantage of these SUV Lease Offers. The problem is, besides the Toyota RAV4 (an excellent lease special), you will be hard pressed to find one that gets you excited. The Toyota RAV4 is head and shoulders above any SUV lease deal that's out there. My LVR (Lease Value Ratio) formula rates the RAV4 deal as Excellent. None of the other SUVs even rank in the 'Good' category. In fact, the Toyota RAV4 is so far ahead of it's closest competitor, the Honda CR-V, that you might think this is a joke. Sadly, it's not. The 2010 Honda CR-V will cost you $40.00 a month more to lease. You will have to put an additional $100 down on the CR-V and its LVR is only1.39 as opposed to 1.11

for the RAV4. If that's not bad enough, here is the real kicker: Unlike the AWD RAV4, the Honda CR-V is only a front wheel drive SUV. I thought about including only SUVs with AWD for this lease feature. Sadly, there were so few decent AWD leases on SUVs being offered, that I had to include all of them. I wonder why the AWD vehicles don't lease as well. I would think the residual value of 4-wheel drives would be quite high. I have to believe that the residual values of SUVs are a victim of other factors such as local climate and geography. Read the rest of this entry »

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