Yep…I personally don’t know anyone who would buy an X5 (or any other luxury car) today and have the same X5 in 2031.
1 Like
6 years? Many asians do that.
We’re not saying absolutes here. I’m sure there are one offs that buy and hold Bimmers for many years. But generally speaking, the BMW buyer skews differently than a Toyota/Lexus buyer. You can see this in what percent of used X5 and GLE from MY 2018 are currently listed online with only 1 previous owner.
The mix for the Germans SUVs available from that year is about 20%, and the % single owner for a Highlander after 6 years for a Highlander is 50%. Acura MDX and Lexus RX slots somewhere in the middle.
And this isn’t even factoring in how the number of used Highlanders is less than X5 relative to their sales volume; since used Toyotas don’t enter the secondary market at the same rates as BMW.
So when some new user posts on LH about how they are interested in a X5, it is sad to watch certain people try to assign Toyota TCO values. Follow that with the general mocking for leases adds up to a crappy experience for people who join LH to learn about leasing.
If the intent is to roll the vehicle every 3 years anyway, the leasing makes sense since the lease includes built in GAP insurance and has a guaranteed residual floor that could still be sold for positive equity at lease maturity.
1 Like
BMW buyer needs to impress people he doesn’t know. Can’t do that with a 6 year old model.
Gap insurance costs almost nothing from an insurance carrier. I can’t imagine anyone uses that as a factor in the buy vs lease calculus.
1 Like
Blast from the past.
I think @IAC is anothet person on LH that seems to explain the acquisition cost of a lease to include more than just the paperwork. probably not $1,095 worth like acquisition for a Benz lease though.
But yeah I agree the average person doesn’t factor the GAP into a buy vs lease calc since the acquisition fee bogey covers the value. And it can vary wildly by vehicle.
Very important caveat here is that you have to stay under mileage for that to make sense. The worst situation to be in is to be 20k miles over and $15k underwater. You basically can’t finance the overage charge so unless you have $5k available you are forced to buy out the vehicle.
Somewhat off topic but I think BMW buyers gets a bad rap based on 30 yet old tropes (23 year old guy fresh out of college buying a 3 series with payments equaling 50% of their take home pay). Now BMW buyers are much older and wealthier than average Americans. More over, the best selling BMW models (X1, X3 and 3 series) probably as a whole transact below the average new car price. The price of BMWs has just not gone up as quickly as that of most trucks and SUVs over the past 20 years.
1 Like
Who said old people can’t be asshole BMW owners?
Yeah good point about the over miles thing. Most leases punish over-miles since the $0.20 or $0.25 per mile hit is pretty heavy. Although, BMW lets you buy miles at a fair-ish value so maybe it’s not as big of a deal as I thought.
Depreciation impact on the EQS 13 month deal was an exception since $0.25 per mile was cheaper than adding the miles to the lease up front and dropping the resid a full point.
On the topic of the bad rap BMW buyers… throwback to one of the best Bimmer threads on LH:
That’s a heck of a lease. As far as I can tell, we don’t know how the story ended.
IIRC @IAC put him in a low money factor EV lease and he buried the neggy eggy to try and move on SAL. Story as old as time…
1 Like
Debatable…23 cents as opposed to 25 is not really that much cheaper. I think you used to be able to buy at 20 cents but not sure
1 Like
It was .18 at one point, and now .23 for pre-payment. A 10% discount is not nothing, for 10k mile overage you’re paying 2300 instead of 2500.
2 Likes
Man it’s $0.23 now? Overmiles inflation sucks.