I have heard of BMW i3s for ~$3k through one-pay and Chevy Volts for basically $70 through one-pay. But has there ever been a free car lease? From some weird and rare set of discounts, incentives, and rebates? I’d imagine they would be exploited and patched immediately right? Or not patched, but funding would run out for whichever discounts, incentives, and rebates from overuse? Lol
I did do a search and only found this: 2016 E-golf free lease
Has there been any other? 
For sure it will probably only apply to electric cars due to addition of state/county rebates, cause you can bet the dealership isn’t going to give a free lease. I think last year’s Ford Focus Electric closeout someone who qualified for CVRP low income rebate ($4500) might’ve achieved it. Even though the residuals sucked, Ford was giving $15k in incentives. Or if you live in San Joaquin Valley they also give $4500 ON TOP of CVRP I think?
Question - why would dealerships care if someone get an essentially free car? At the end of the day, don’t they get hard cash from the discounts,incentives, and rebates?
some people have leased volvos on this forum that were so heavily rebated that after driving a few months they were able to flip out of them and make a profit. Not taking insurance cost into account, that could be considered free or better.
Which models? Was it an EV/PHEV, etc.? And aren’t Volvos luxury cars? How is that even…Lol
Outside of sucking every penny they can out of you, and not taking a huge bath in the deal, they shouldn’t.
Didn’t someone have a free, or virtually free Malibu or Cruze on here? I swear I remember it being spoken of, but can’t find it.
People that have had free deals had a perfect storm, and it’s rare to replicate with frequency. Good dealer discount, strong incentives, and for the BEVs, state and federal subsidies that not everyone would qualify for. There’s really nothing to patch up as you say.
yes, people flipped the cruze deals also. It’s due to heavy rebates from manufacturers that those things are possible.
My 2015 spark EV was almost free after $2500 cvrp and $450 Edison rebate it was under $12 total for 36 months. I ended up profiting like $2k after GM had to buy it back recently for being a lemon.
Not free but I remember someone here got $20 lease on cruze.
Yes people who leased and then flipped for a profit got a free lease. Volvo s90, chevy Cruze come to mind. IN fact they got paid to lease 
my friend bought a used diesel VW right before the scandal broke, drove it for like 3 years and then they had to buy it back for $5k more than what he paid for it.
I leased one of those 2016 Chevy Cruzes a couple of years ago. Taking into account the $700 Costco incentive, it was about $20/mth. And that was 15k miles. 10k miles would have been about $5/mth.
Had I been a member of the Farm Bureau ($50 to sign up but you had to have been a member for a certain amount of time) it would have been an extra $500 off and it would have been free. I know a few people at the time actually got it a little cheaper and essentially got paid to lease the car at the end of the day.
But as others said, it was the perfect storm of end of model run with great incentives, etc…
You telling me you had the $20/mo Cruze AND you flipped your S90 for profit? You’re killing the hacking game.
Well the Volvo was just dumb luck. And trust me, I’ve had my share of over paying in the past, lol.
Funny thing is those Cruze leases are how I first found this site over two years ago. I only was able to do it because of the info on this site. I think there were about 20 people total on these forums back then. It has obviously exploded!! 
I worked with Volvo until moving to Mercedes. I just had to laugh sometimes when you start digging through the 100 page monthly manual while working a lease. It feels like one of those puzzles where you look in the corner of this page turn around three times and go forward 5 pages. There were just random huge rebates and then some cars had none at all. Typically it was due to packages. I had one customer we were just trying to find the right vehicle for her range on a lease. There were two nearly identical S60’s next to each other except for wheels and packages it took to achieve almost identical builds. One lease was nearly $200 less a month. I think it was Dynamic vs Momentum package.
Same thing happened to a coworker of mine. Bought a jetta wagon for 20k (nused from someone else) and VW bought it back from him 3 years later for 21k. He was actually sad to let it go, but couldn’t turn down the opportunity of the free car.
It is all about timing, being at the right place at the right time and sometimes dumb luck. Buy low and sell high. Bought a brand new civic years ago and sold it to the dealer after driving it more than a year for the same price i paid - free car. Won a local auction for a brand new cx-7 and sold it to the dealer 2 years later for $2k profit. Not free but recently leased two 17 malibu - $26k car for $80 a month. Not all my deals ar like that. You win some, you lose some. Getting too old for this leasing game.
When GA had the $5K EV state incentive, there were reportedly some who did get a free lease or made money on high incentive months mainly on the Leaf…Furthermore, the Leaf came with two sources of free charging, first was free charging at Nissan dealerships and the second was a free membership to their “no charge to charge” program. If you were a GA resident, you could live with the Leaf’s range limitation and you could utilize the free charging back then a cheap Leaf lease was as good as it gets.
I was told GM’s current $2500 Asian Conquest can stack with other incentives such as military, grad, etc. Someone should find out which model Chevy has the cheapest lease this month because while not free, could be a $0 down $39/mo Spark ACTIV with an Asian conquest and another stacked incentive but who knows. However, one other free* with an asterisk lease scenario could be using your GM Buypower credit card redemption which does have various bonus redemption offers from time to time. So if there’s a GM Buypower bonus exemption offer at the same time that GM is offering generous incentives (and maybe that’s intentionally never allowed to happen) it could be a free lease.