How to Lease an IS300 (help!)

Leasing is not about investing. Cars are not good investments to begin with! You wouldn't put $40k into a stock that's gonna drop 15% in a week would you? And then just keep depreciating? I mean sure, if you're gonna keep the car in mint condition over 6-7 years, it will probably sell better than the average car in that configuration, but it's a poor way to leverage your money IMO.

Leasing is for folks like me, who want a lower monthly payment than financing, don't want to have to deal with selling the car later on, do want to be able to get into a new car every few years (or sooner), and who don't really care that they have a revolving car payment. Personally I work for my car, and that's about it. If there was one thing I would never give up it'd be my car, but then again I'm a crazy fool so it doesn't really matter.

Originally posted by RobC:
Hrmmm... I'd only like to be spending ~$450 a month on the lease, is that going to be feasible with the car I want? And I'll need more then 12k a year, probably 15.

Click to expand...

I got negotiated my lease on the last day in March. I got a black exterior with black interior so everything but the LSD. I got mine for $2500 down (that's including everything... tax, license, acquisition... no security) and $451 a month for 36 months with 15k miles a year. But my monthly ended up being $474 cause I added another $700 for an extra paint and leather protection through the dealership. If there are any spills in the car on the leather they'll get the stains out or even replace it. Don't know if I got suckered but I'll find out when something happens.
I can go into more detail on how I negotiated the deal... in fact if you do a search you can probably find my old posting.

As for tips you should negotiate price first and get that as low as possible. Also ask to see all the numbers like the residual value and the money factor as well as all the fees such as acquisition. You'll need them to do your your own calculations. If you are not familiar with calculating a lease get familiar now... I spent 6 months waiting to get my car and during that time I studied as much as I could about leases and before then I knew nothing. I memorized all the formula's so that I could take the numbers and double check their results to make sure they were not cheating me. Another thing I would recommend is not to lease the car over 36 months. By getting the 39 month lease you end up paying registration for the car for the 4th year and you'll just have it for 3 months. Also having the car any term longer than 36 months could bring the mileage over the 50K mark which would mark the end of your warranty.

The standard lease program when I was looking this month (negotiated and put down deposit on May 9, signed and picked up on this past weekend) was $399 for 39 months, with $2,374 due at signing.

Down Payment............$1,075
First Month's pay.........$399
Acquisition Fee...........$450
Security Deposit..........$450
TOTAL due at signing....$2,374

I believe this deal still valid until next month (?), but you can definitely take advantage of the program's special interest rate, 0.00228 (or 5.47%), and negotiate a significantly better capitalized cost of the car (the deal is based on a cap. cost of $31,866, with leather, heated seats, sunroof, trunk mat, and wheel lock, versus a invoice of $29,691 + $545 Destination Charge + $385 'Advertising Fee' = $30,621. I'm not exactly sure if the 'Ad Fee' is valid, it very well could be, but you might want to consider it negotiable.