One frequently asked question on Leasehackr is: “What’s the cheapest car to lease? I don’t care what it is.” Well, I spent the entire morning scrolling through the Marketplace and here are the results! These are all around $200/month or less. This list builds on @Lvs23’s herculean effort last December.
There is no definitive “cheapest” car because it depends on your particular situation (e.g., conditional incentives, tax rates, registration fees, EV rebates, annual mileage). If you qualify for every single EV incentive (CVAP, CVRP, etc.), then a Chevrolet Bolt EV is likely the cheapest car period.
I only included cars that I could find on the Marketplace, which are actual deals rather than hypothetical targets. There are probably even more options if you put in the legwork to research and negotiate a deal of your own.
When browsing the Marketplace, you can’t go off monthly payment alone. Some of the ads specified the exact drive-off amount, whereas others were “1st + TTL + fees” at signing. I did my best to normalize them when considering which vehicles to add to this list.
I stopped scrolling once I reached topics that last had activity over a week ago. Apologies if I missed any.
Obviously go for the car you like (and the dealer or broker you can trust), not the car that happens to be $3 cheaper per month. The point of this exercise is to lay out what options are available around $200/month or less with minimal drive-off.
Feel free to suggest additional cars! These are all for December 2020.
@michael thanks for reviving Slava’s (@Lvs23) post, this is quite a task and he will attest that it take hours / days to pull this info together. I want to include a disclaimer, which is something to factor in all these dealer/broker based deals.
Beyond any DAS amount advertised, or “1st + TTL + fees” due at signing, there’s another variable (sometimes substantial) to consider in the broker fee. Some brokers don’t have an extra fee, many others charge $250-399 and there are others that are $600 or more, which on a 24-36 month lease adds $20-25/mo to the payment.
Broker fees should be noted by new members of the community, these fees can be a substantial variable to any deal and need to be considered when shopping for the “lowest cost lease”.
Great thread! Obviously tons of work, but it would definitely be a great go to if it could be replicated every month. Either way, thanks for putting this together.
Brokers and dealers should just post each month our vehicles under $200. Personally I think $250 and under is a cheap lease on a brand new car because, inflation…
Ok so what I am doing wrong here? I see cars listed and brokers but no price. I’m going to check out their posts but sounds like (from the other posts) that I should be able to see deal details here. Noob disclaimer. Thanks.
I only included links to each seller’s forum profile, where you can find their recent topics. I didn’t provide an exact price because it varies based on your personal circumstances (tax rate, location, conditional incentives, etc.)
For example, the CX-30 deal is below $200 in Florida, but in California you would need the returning lessee incentive to get close. Depending on whether or not you have Costco and lease conquest/loyalty, that’s a difference of $125 per month for the Bolt EV!
EDIT - for folks like me without the returning lease rebate and loyalty rebate you’re looking at $250ish+tax with 1st & DMV for the cheapest Mazdas (in my case, CX-30). If you have those rebates, you can get very close to $200 on the CX-30! Also, save yourself a ton of headache in Florida & go with AutoLeaseNinjas. Telling you from personal experience over last 2 weeks that just trying to get the Mazda dealers to even understand MSD’s and discount the car appropriately has been a nightmare, not to mention the $1k dealer doc fees. Autoleaseninjas got me quoted at $750 DAS, 9 MSD’s (refundable) and about $220/mo tax-in for a CX-30 Select (1 trim higher than base) which is killer after the other quotes I’ve gotten. To be clear, I dont have loyalty though. If you do, its even cheaper!
