2017 Mercedes-Benz C300 Lease Offer

Ask the Hackrs
1

Hi Hackrs,

This is my first time in the forum and my first time leasing. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, all the information and help you provide us.

I would like to take advantage of your expertise to ask you for advice on whether this is a good lease deal.

2017 Mercedes-Benz C300 4Matic Sedan
MSRP: 47,255
Negotiated Price: 39,159.68
Residual value: 29,420.30
Title, Licenses, Registration: 278.06
Acquisition fee: 1,095
Sales/Use taxes: 1,337.05
Processing fee: 495

Monthly payment on a 36 month lease with 12,000 miles/yr: $400
Due at lease signing: $3,300 (includes first month payment, all fees, and taxes over the entire lease paid upfront as required in NY)

Optional maintenance plan for the 3 years for $875.

Can anyone please advice me whether this is a good deal?

I will greatly appreciate any help you can provide me. Thanks in advance!

1 Like
2

The numbers look pretty solid though I would like to know what the MF is.

3

That is the one number they did not provide and I forgot to ask. (rookie me)

I tried using the Leasehackr calculator to replicate the numbers, but if I enter all fees and the tax rate for NY, and I play with the NF to get to the $400 / month payment, I get 0.00189.

However, the calculator gives me $3,608 due at drive off in fees and taxes, not $3,300. I’m guessing the dealer reduced that amount to compensate for the MF, or something like that. I don’t know how to justify the $308 higher drive off in the Leasehackr calculator otherwise.

Trying something else, if I take $400*35 + $3,300 and divide by the 36 months in the lease, I get an effective monthly rate of $480.56, which is not quite the 1% of MSRP of 472.55, but ~1.017% including all taxes.

Adding the prepaid maintenance increases the monthly payment by $24.30, which brings that ratio up to 1.067%, but includes prepaid maintenance for the term of the lease.

4

They do say that the “rent charge” is $3,483.78.

5

From my calculations, that puts the MF are about .00141.

6

Yeah get MF confirmed, do auto pay and you get more off the MF

I’d shoot for the maintenance included (I’ve done that on my SLK and a friends CLA, just say BMW give it free and it’s usually lumped in)

7

Thanks! I will try to find out what MF the numbers correspond to. They do include auto pay though.

They wouldn’t include maintenance for me, because they believe that they are already providing a high discount in the car price to get the drive off amount down to $3300. So basically, those numbers are as much as they are willing to go in their deal.

8

If you can and have the time, take the numbers to next guy, rinse and repeat until you get a higher spec car for same or less money or some other things thrown in.

Research their stock and see if they have the exact specification - if not - check for a better one and go in focused on that specific car. Ive done this in SoCal no problem but don’t know what NY is like to deal in.

$400/mth isn’t too bad really - as long as you are at base MF

9

@BenzBuyer, @Jon, @AMM, Thank you all for your responses. They were very helpful.

Ok, this is what I believe happened.

I had a quote from a dealer for a slightly less expensive car ($46,505 MSRP) paying $449 a month with $2921 drive off plus maintenance.

I took that to this dealer. They offered me $400 a month on the slightly higher $47,255 MSRP car above with $3300 drive off.

Ok, now they have to “play” with their system to make those numbers fit with whatever the breakdown of car discount, fees, taxes, MF, etc. are.

I then inquire about maintenance. They wouldn’t do a free maintenance but gave me a discount on the normal price. They offered $875 and told me that LoJack was an extra $225 but they were including it free.

So divide $875 by 36 months and the monthly payments go up to $424.30, but still drive off staying the same at $3300.

Now they have to go back to their system and “play” with the numbers again to bring the total down to 424.30/month with 3300 drive off. If they input maintenance and LoJack, their computers are going to add whatever the original price of those things are ($1275 and $225). And taxes, license and registration are what they are, you can’t do anything with those and NY requires them to be paid upfront. So I believe to make the numbers converge, they played with the car discount and the MF.

Here is what the final breakdown looks like:

MSRP: $47,255
Discount: $8,095.32

Sale Price: $39,159.68
Taxes, title, licenses, registration: $1,837.34
Acquisition fee: $1,095
Processing fee: $495
LoJack: $225
3 year Pre-paid Maintenance: $1,275

Gross Capitalized Cost: $44,087.02
Capitalized cost reductions: $2,875.70

Adjusted Capitalized Cost: $41,211.32
Residual value at 62.2586% of MSRP: $29,420.30

Rent Charge: $3,483.78

That amounts to a MF = 0.00137 including auto-pay.

That takes the monthly payments to the $424.30 agreed, with $3,300 drive off ($2,875.70 capitalized cost reductions + $424.30 first payment).

It also makes the total cost of the lease $18,745.50 (including the $595 disposition fee paid at the end of the lease).

If I divide $18745.50 by 36 months, I get 1.1% of MSRP, not quite the 1% you guys recommend, but it includes the taxes, maintenance and LoJack (though I am not sure if LoJack is really free in all leases and they’re just trying to make it sound good).

10

Several issues I see. First, is this a demo? Why is the RV% not a whole number? Also, the acq fee is higher than normal and the maintenance plan should be residualized.

11

No, it is not a demo. It is a brand new car with 11 miles on it.

Good point on the residual value. They just quoted $29,420.30. I took that and divided by MSRP and got that number.

My guess is that once they agreed to a $424.30 monthly payment total, and $3300 drive off total including maintenance and LoJack, they were forced to work the numbers to add up to that, wherever they needed to discount or adjust.

12

Lojack is a joke. You can purchase in NJ and use MSD’s.

13

They cannot change RV though.

14

Here are the screenshots.
$29,420.30 is the residual value, and $47,255 the MSRP.

Untitled.png882Ă—541 745 KB

15

Couple quick things. Acquisition fee is marked up from $795. The LoJack is worthless and totally un-necessary (IMHO). The 3 year of prepaid maintenance seems rather high. Basically on a 36k lease you are going to need 3 services (MB does yearly or every 10k miles). The first service is pretty simple and should run under $150. The second is more thorough and should run about $375. That means that the last service is costing you $750 which in my experience it will NOT cost that. When I got my E300, adding service was $17 a month when spread out over the cost of the 36 payments. That means they were charging me $612 plus interest. They tried desperately to convince me that the 3 services (only 2 really since i have a 30k lease and MB almost always lets you turn in the lease a little early if you lease another MB) retail at over $800. At first glance they are making $300 on Acquisition, at least $400 on the maintenance (and that is taking into account retail pricing, not dealer cost). The Residual looks correct (62%). The 2875 in CCR would drop by 1800 if you took away the maintenance, lojack, and got that Acquisition fee down to the $795 it should be.
All in all, 424 for this car is a pretty good deal but not with almost 3,000 coming out of your pocket at inception. If you divide that 2875.70 over the 36 months ($79.88) and add it to the monthly (424) you get $503.88 which fails the general 1% rule.

1 Like
16

Does the 1% rule include taxes and maintenance?

I thought it did not since taxes are different from state to state – and maintenance is extra to the cost of the car – and one should be able to compare uniformly between states.

17

The 1% “rule” does not include maintenance because I think that the consensus here is that prepaid maintenance (that is not provided free) is kind of a ripoff.
Taxes are generally included in the 1% calculation (at least when I do it) and while it does vary state to state, the only places where the customer gets screwed are states where you pay tax on the total cost of the vehicle and not just on the depreciation.
If you love this car and are comfortable with that payment, then go for it. I was just trying to point out a few areas where this dealer was making money on you. If you could work those few things out then you would be getting a better deal.

18

@BenzBuyer Ah, got it. Thank you for your explanation! Since it is my first experience with a lease (or with a car in general, this is my first car), I wanted to understand precisely the types of things you pointed out and explained, and how to apply the rules and make sure the entire thing is not a ripoff. So this is very helpful. It seems then that in general it’s not too terrible of a deal, so not entirely a rip-off, but it could be better. Thanks so much again!

19

I hope you havent siged it yet. You are in the territory of an e300 lease numbers. For me, not that good. MF too high

20

This month’s c class MF is .00108