Hi LH community,
Sorry for the novel of a post, this is one of those get-it-off-my-chest things that I needed to write about and share somewhere…
I wish I had learned about LH many months ago because I’ve learned so much about the world of car leasing – and car buying in general – through LH in just the last two weeks than I ever knew! Maybe it would’ve helped me approach my most recent car-buying experience below differently.
Anyway, I’m writing this post to help evaluate the deal around the “one that got away”, so to speak. I’ve been mulling over whether I made the right choice on a car I had been wanting to get for quite a while, but unfortunately did not take delivery on due to circumstances at the time. Since I recently discovered this community and have been learning a lot more about the world of leasing, I’m wondering whether you all can help me evaluate whether it was actually a good thing that I did not through with this lease.
Long story short, I had been wanting to buy a BMW M550i for a while and finally in early 2023 had decided to look into custom ordering one, since I figured it would be my last chance on getting a brand new one configured exactly like I wanted before they discontinued making them.
So last March I put in an order at a SoCal dealer that at the time said they didn’t have any allocations for one, but promised they would be getting one soon. Fast forward a bit and the allocation didn’t materialize until May, and the car didn’t go into production until June of 2023. So basically, this M550 ended up being one of the last ones off the assembly line. Overall, it took almost 6 months from the time the order went in to when the car finally arrived at the dealer in August.
Anyway, a lot can happen in 6 months and unfortunately my wife wasn’t quite as onboard with getting the car as she was earlier in the year and our financial priorities changed a bit, plus there were some uncertainties around my job at the time that made buying an expensive car like this seem not so sensible, all of which led me to not going through with the purchase. But I was this close… like literally, all I had to do was send over the insurance info and send the dealer the credit card authorization and I probably would’ve gone through with signing the docs and buying the car.
Fast forward to now, things have changed again, and now I’m thinking about this car again and how I let it slip away… This really was more or less my dream car, the closest realization of driving something like that blue M5 in the Need for Speed video game when I was a teenager lol. I was planning on keeping it 'til the wheels fell off, especially with the all-EV future being right around the corner.
And now financially things look even better – I got a good pay raise at work and things are stable, so I’m now even more comfortable affording a new car than I even was back in March; my wife is back to being on board with getting one, and our financial priorities are such that there is room for a nice car for us. So if the M550 had only arrived a couple months later, I would’ve totally been able to go through with it.
But of course, that M550 is long gone by now, and I’m kicking myself for letting it go because now I’ll never get a chance to own a new one. The new 2024 5-series does not appeal to me; and I know I can try to find a used M550, but the experience just won’t quite be the same as being able to drive away in one with that new car smell and knowing you were the one and only owner of it.
All that said though… I’ve been looking over the numbers I got from the dealer had I gone through with the deal, and after reading through a lot of the info shared here on LH, I’m wondering if whether I had actually dodged kind of a bad deal?
Initially I was going to do a finance purchase of the car (I’ve only ever financed a car, hadn’t done leases before; but I’ve now come to learn I don’t think anyone does financing on a $100k OTD car); but later I ended up asking the sales consultant for a lease offer because I didn’t want to put so much money down.
Here’s how the numbers ended up breaking down when he drew up the lease offer:
2023 BMW M550i
Location: SoCal
MSRP: $92,995
Sales price: $91,995
Taxed incentives: (0 I think? There was no real mention of any incentives)
Tax rate: 8.5%
Term: 36 months /10k Miles
MF: 0.00230
Residual: 57%
DAS: 4,500
Monthly: $1,463 (including monthly tax)
Below is the LH Calculator numbers I was able to put together based on the quote:
I tried to get close on the LH calc to the numbers I was given in the lease offer, but I couldn’t quite make sense of the upfront payment numbers they gave me… I know the $4500 DAS includes the first month’s payment, but the upfront charges they listed were at 2233.66 which when added to the first month payment didn’t add up to 4500, so I’m not sure how they got to that number.
Anyway, the car was configured Phytonic Blue with Ivory Interior, with most options ticked except ceramic controls and the window shades (also no alcantara headliner or leather dash, all these seemed like silly features to me). It even had DHP which I’ve come to learn few M550s are optioned with.
At first I took the monthly payment I was presented as just what it takes to lease this kind of car… but after reading through posts here, it looks like it might’ve actually been pretty high seeing as I’ve seen people post lower monthly payments for high end cars like a 7-series that have MSRP’s well north of $100k.
One thing I think I could’ve done differently is negotiate down the sale price of the car. At the time I figured I didn’t have much to negotiate since I was custom ordering the car – but after reading through internet posts, I’ve seen people mention negotiating similarly configured, custom ordered 2023 M550s down at least 5-8% from MSRP. So sounds like there would’ve been room to do so?
The rest of the numbers I’m not so sure about… does this seem like it would’ve been a bad deal for this car? Realistically could I have gotten the lease payment down further?
Obviously I don’t know what kind of deal the person who ended up leasing this M550 got, but I still really wish I could get this particular car… I know it’s probably really silly of me to say this, but if somehow I knew who the buyer was and if they were open to it, I’d totally offer to take over the lease from them if they were willing! That’s how special this car was to me. It’s the one that got away!
