I am contemplating leasing a BMW demo with a little over 6k miles for 3 years. The factory warranty and maintenance will cover me during that period, but my concern is that I might need to replace the tires after putting an additional 36k miles. Any suggestions on how to deal with this issue? Can the dealer give me any concessions? What are my options? Thanks.
buy a new set or tires/wheels put the new one on and when you return put hte old ones on
I think that defeats what he was trying to accomplish which is not to buy tires.
Whenever you get a demo, you should be getting a further discount compared to a new car. That’s to account for the extra mileage already on the car and the wear that comes with it.
Whether you are going to get a further concession is entirely dependent on how good a deal you’re already getting. There is nothing special about the cost of tires versus any other cost.
I recently leased a BMW and they mentioned that there may be excess wear and tear charges if the remaining tire tread is below their requirements. I ended up getting the excess wear and tear coverage which would cover the tires. FYI, most BMW’s use sport tires and they don’t last all that long in my experience.
buy a used set of tires at the end of the lease with just enough thread on them to pass. Can be found on Craigslist for $100 if you’re near a big city. Make sure they’re runflat tires if your car originally came equipped with them otherwise BMW makes you pay dearly for the missing tires.
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That’s the best advice
Doesn’t make sense to me. If the used tires from Craigslist “with just enough thread on them” better than his original tires, that means he would be driving on worn tires in even worst condition for some time by the lease end. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it make more sense to replace OEM tires (with cheaper used ones as an option) when they get worn to unsafe condition even if it’s 1 year before lease end, regardless?
Thanks for your input. I have installed used tires previously to return cars without problems. However, sometimes is challenging to find the same or similar tires in “used” condition. I am wondering how to negotiate with the dealer to protect me against this given that is a fact that I will need to replace tires at some point. Seems that the dealer doesn’t have much room to negotiate with me as he made a mistake in the calculation and after I complained he said he will honor my first estimate. Lets see what happens.
When you install a used set of tires for purpose of driving them you gotta balance them and possibly align them and then you don’t know if the used tires are actually any decent or worn unevenly. When you return the car you just slap on the used tires, doesn’t matter how they drive, you don’t have to align them or anything they just have to all the same brand and runflat if original car came with runflats.
As to the comment of worn tires in worse condition, the car company does not want the expense of putting new tires on the car and try to pass the cost on to you. They are concerned about reselling the car at the biggest profit. The tires on your car if maintained well can be better even at a lower thread level than used tires where you don’t know how they were driven even if they have more thread.
Sure, I understand all this. I was talking about extreme case of driving on worst tires for a few month before lease end, not about returning. I.e. they become a problem for return/driveability a year or a few month before return.