Wife totaled her car - looking for good lease options of CUV or bigger (likely lease to own)

Fortunately, my wife is okay, but she totalled her car and we’re now scrambling to figure out her car situation given the time crunch. Any good lease options for a CUV or bigger?

Thanks in advance for the help!

Leasing to own rarely makes any sense

CUV = crossover = it just means unibody, doesn’t imply anything about size. Could be anything from a Honda HRV to a VW Atlas.

So what are you looking for, where do you live, and what’s your budget?

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Sorry, here are more specifics:

Size: Tiguan or bigger (compact SUV)
Location: Midwest
Budget: Up to $400

Leasing to own is in the cards for us due to the fact that this is an unplanned expense for us. We’re not in a position to put down a large downpayment on a purchase. Leasing has appeal because of sign and drive options.

What was she driving before? Was it leased or financed?

You can most certainly think about lease to own before you return the car in 24-39 months. If this is really what you want to do you might consider CPO.

If she needs bigger car you can consider lots of options from Toyota:

She can also get Infiniti QX60

If you have no kids, I would go with q50 3.0T…

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Leasing to own is rarely going to work out in your favor because one of the key ingredients to a good lease (High residual value) means that you are going to pay for that all later when you go to purchase the car at the end of the lease at the (almost always non negotiable) buyout price. In the real world there’s almost no chance of that buyout price being the same or less than what the same car would fetch on the used market. Better off just moving on to the next one at lease end, or consider a purchase of a CPO used car, or even something like a new Chevy Trax, the purchase offers are pretty strong on those at the moment, if you are looking for a small CUV.

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I get where this is coming from. Pressed for time and would rather a purchase be more thoroughly thought out. So leasing to hold you over. Don’t think of it as leasing to buy, though. It will most likely be a lease followed by another lease or totally unrelated purchase. As such, make sure you get enough miles so you can turn it in without penalty, and probably try to keep it to 24 mos. Maybe look at some of the X1 loaner deals posted in the marketplace.

Who was at fault?

Do you have rental car coverage on your auto insurance policy?

Even if you have to rent something from Enterprise for $200 a week OOP, that could be dramatically less expensive than making an impulsive purchase/lease decision that you’ll have to live with for the next X years.

Can you be more specific? $600 DMV and 10% tax leaves a lot less in your budget for the actual vehicle than $100 tags and 3% tax.