I got a lease quote on a new Land Rover Defender X-Dynamic HSE
and it’s pretty bad.
36 months, 10K miles/year. $5K das $1244/month (tax included in payment. “Market Value Selling Price” $78,345.
If you must lease something right now… any ideas on what to do at this point? Land Rover or another luxury SUV?
Obviously I don’t know what trim you are quoting but paying $50k over a 3 year lease on a vehicle that is at dealerships for $60k to $100k doesn’t sound too smart.
Agreed, but not sure there are many options in a market where inventory is so constrained.
Did you ask the dealer what the lease for that vehicle would cost you, or did you TELL him what you would be willing to pay?
That is your first mistake.
Regardless of vehicle, you need to figure out what you would require for your deal to happen. Then you find a vehicle of interest and present your offer.
How does their offer compare to the target deal you put together before talking to the dealer, based on the current programs and researched deals from here?
How did you obtain the quote?
Was it a walk-in the dealership or via phone/email?
This is WAY over the 1% rule and closer to 2% rule. Look up the recent defender post on this forum, which is still over the 1% rule but much better…
Don’t start that crap
Apologize … Next time I will put a “1% rule trigger warning” before the post …
1% rule is a great rule of thumb that works for me to quickly evaluate deals before jumping into the detailed numbers. Change my mind …
I know you’re just trolling as usual, but going down making these suggestions in a thread for someone that obviously is just starting to learn what’s going on is going to leave them with a poor understanding of how to actually work out where they should be, so I’ll answer the question anyway for everyone else’s benefit.
When two people can get the exact same discount in the exact same car, and one person’s deal is 1.2% and the other person’s deal is .7%, you should know everything you need to know about the validity of using a percent of msrp as a target.
The problem is people are looking for a shortcut metric to inform them of the validity of a deal and it just doesn’t exist.
A better approach for looking at the validity of something like the 1% rule is to ask “for a rule to be useful, what do we need to it to tell us?”
If that’s the question, I would say it would need to say one (or more) of the following:
Now, let’s caveat this with one more assertion: it would also be helpful if the rule applied to at least a good chunk of the people that want to apply it.
So let’s look at each of those…
It certainly doesn’t tell us that. All one needs do is look at the vast change in incentives and regional pricing to determine that. I’ve seen incentive swings between two people of $10k before. Two people can get the exact same discount, but because of incentives, be hundreds apart on the monthly payment. Throw in regional taxes and you can literally have the same deal be off by .5% of msrp per month. Further, even when incentives are standardized and taxes/fees are ignored, what is a good deal for a vehicle varies wildly. On some cars, 1.25% is essentially impossible. On others, .75% is mediocre at best. There are definitely times when 1% is a good deal, but it varies by month, by person, by region, by vehicle, etc. A stopped clock is right twice a day.
Obviously as payment as a % of msrp decreases, you’re getting more for your dollar relative to msrp, but so what? Some brands have a marketing strategy where they inflate the msrp and then offer large incentives so you feel like you’re getting a deal. Others don’t subvene their rates to hold value. There isn’t some magic % where this suddenly becomes a good thing.
The argument that gets used often with the LH score is that it gives some inclination as to when it makes more sense to lease than to buy. This, of course, assumes that you purchase at msrp with no incentives, no taxes, no fees, no interest, etc. The problem is that it doesn’t actually compare the lease terms against the financing terms. When the msrp gets subvened by significant incentives, a % of msrp number is suddenly a % of a completely irrelevant number.
So here’s where that leaves us… We have a rule that isn’t applicable to a variety of people, doesn’t tell you if something is a good deal, doesn’t tell you if something is a good value, and doesn’t give you any insight as to if leasing is a better financial decision.
So maybe if you’re looking for a bmw 330, in North Carolina, in January, after leasing a previous bmw, joining bmwcca, and are named jason it applies; but you’d only know that after actually calculating and researching, which is exactly what you need to do to actually answer any of the above questions.
When I was in college, we had the same debate, us engineers vs the physics students. The latter would calculate everything to the last nth decimal place. We would pull out our “rule of thumb books” and calculate the I-beam cross section needed for a bridge span in 4 seconds and then multiply it by a safety factor of 3 and called it good.
Guess who built more bridges quicker - us or the physics class?
Your reasoning is fulling appreciated. But I am not trolling any more than I was trolling my physics class mates by giving them my I-beam calc in a few seconds… 1% helps me quickly get to smash or pass decision …
And just so you know, I am telling OP this deal is pass … And I am not trolling - I just gave you props for writing a better piece on leasing than Wall Street Journal @mllcb42
It’s a take it or leave it offer.
With constrained inventories, dealerships are asking whatever they want to for vehicles.
As an engineer, I agree that this is a perfect analogy. By using a rule of thumb up front and not taking the time to actually calculate the proper answer, you end up with a solution that is far from the most cost efficient it could be. You also end up killing people if you don’t properly assess your requirements. Some time spent up front doing the math for real results in a much better answer than something that’s either way too expensive or just unrealistic.
There are good data points available here that would get you into a significantly better price position on a defender with more upfront research done. One of which is that there is an unreasonably large swing in residual values between defender trims. If you’re leasing, it is very much in your favor to target a 110s than an X because of the significantly higher residual value.
So you had asked the dealer what the lease would cost you.
I love the @vhooloo vs @mllcb42 grudge match thing …but I do wonder if they are just alter egos of one
@deano This unanswered question from mllcb42 is probably the most important thing to take away from this thread.
Research the marketplace and share deals sections here, use that information to put together a target deal that you’re willing to accept, then use that to direct dealer conversations instead of letting them direct the conversation.