Yahoo Autos $199 Lease Deals on Cars, Trucks, and SUVs for August 2018
It’s August and it’s hot and, according to our extensive research, most car-dealership showrooms are air conditioned. Maybe now is a good time to enjoy that chill and lease a new vehicle. So here is Car and Driver’s monthly roundup of factory lease deals promoted at around $199 a month. The Giant Enormous Chart of Deals (GECD) on display below is harvested from the manufacturers’ consumer-facing websites.
The goal of this assembly is to give you a tool to separate the true bargains from the sneakily expensive lease deals. It’s not the end of your research; it’s the start. The end comes in the F&I office at some dealership where it’s so cold there are snow flurries on the documents in late summer.
As much as we love Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Porsches around these parts, the heart of the new-vehicle market is that spot where cars sell for prices mere mortals can afford to lease. But not everyone should be leasing.
Leasing works best for people with predictable, stable lives who know how they’ll be using their new vehicle for the term of the lease. They know to a near certainty how many miles they’ll drive over that period of time, and they know if there are any tax advantages to leasing for their situation. Don’t lease if you’re not comfortable in your career and life.
The cost of a lease is rather straightforward. You (the lessee) pay for the depreciation of the vehicle over the lease term and the cost of the money the lessor is using to purchase the vehicle, plus fees such as security deposits, acquisition fees, disposition charges, and anything else the creative accountants can come up with. Basically, you pay some of the capital costs and fees up front in the form of your initial payment and then a monthly charge that should be-to appear on this list-around $200.
Because so many manufacturer-promoted lease deals are regionalized down to the ZIP code, it’s impossible to be totally comprehensive. We build the chart by surveying four ZIPs: 90069 (Los Angeles), 60609 (Chicago), 48108 (Ann Arbor, Michigan), and 10069 (New York City). And occasionally we’ll throw in a wild card such as Miami, Seattle, or some tiny hamlet in New Hampshire.
Use our survey as a baseline for your research. Then make some calls, be honest about your financial situation and credit rating, and be ready to shop for everything regarding your new vehicle, including but not limited to the total purchase price, the residual value contracted at the end of the lease, mileage allowances, and the interest rate of the money used to support the transaction.
The $199 target price here is a loose one-in some regions dealers may offer the same vehicle at lower or higher rates. If there’s one deal on a vehicle near $199, we list all the deals we find on that vehicle, even if those monthly prices rise up toward $300 or $400 a month. That’s why the GECD is so damned gigantic and enormous.
The chart includes calculations for the total cost of each lease: money due at signing, total monthly payments, and additional costs such as lease-end disposition fees. Then we divide that total by the number of allotted miles in the lease to calculate a cost-per-mile charge assuming full use of the agreed-upon miles. What the chart doesn’t include are taxes or other charges (e.g., registration) that will vary from locale to locale.
Here are this month’s highlights:
Always First. Alphabetically.
Because the GECD is presented here alphabetically by manufacturer, the car at the top every month this year has been the Acura ILX. It’s the only vehicle on the list from a “luxury” brand.
It’s easy to dismiss the ILX as a gussied-up Honda Civic because, well, there’s a lot of Civic in it. And the ILX has been around for a while, too-it was introduced back in 2012 for the 2013 model year. C/D last tested an ILX in 2015 when the updated 2016 model appeared. “Frankly, it’s dull,” we wrote. “Now the only powertrain is an updated 2.4-liter inline-four, nearly identical to the [2016] Civic Si’s, making 201 horsepower and 180 lb-ft of torque coupled to an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic driving the front wheels.”
But while the ILX has been easy to overlook, Acura has experienced modest success with the car. In the first six months of 2018, Acura sold 5526 of them for a nice 17 percent gain over last year’s sales and a 4 percent bump in segment market share. Keep in mind that this small luxury-car segment has been hammered hard with the rise of crossovers while most sedans experience sales losses.
How much of the ILX’s relative success is due to keen leasing offers? Well, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus aren’t advertising $199 leases on any of their cars.
Toyota’s Weird RAV4 Mileage Game
As autumn approaches, many dealerships are taking delivery of their first 2019 models. For instance, Subaru touts lease deals on both 2018 and 2019 model Crosstrek crossovers and Legacy sedans. Even if you can tell the difference between a 2018 Legacy and a 2019 model, is it worth an extra 20 bucks a month?
Get the $199 lease and 12,000 miles a year of use are baked in. Go for the $189 lease and the mileage allowed is 10,000 a year. Over the entire course of the lease, that means the $199 lease is $350 more expensive but stretches out an additional 6000 miles. That means someone who takes the $199 deal is paying 5.8 cents per mile for those additional 6000 miles. Toyota’s leases charge 15 cents for each additional mile beyond the allotments.
If you can calibrate your vehicle mileage that precisely, shop accordingly.
Welcome to the List
A big C/D welcome goes to the new 2019 Toyota Corolla hatchback, the 2018 models of Nissan’s Murano and its Pathfinder SUV, and the 2019 Hyundai Veloster, all of which make their debuts on our enormous list. We’re sure their parents are quite proud.
2018 versus 2019
As autumn approaches, many dealerships are taking delivery of their first 2019 models. For instance, Subaru touts lease deals on both 2018 and 2019 model Crosstrek crossovers and Legacy sedans. Even if you can tell the difference between a 2018 Legacy and a 2019 model, is it worth an extra 20 bucks a month?
Big Trucks Aren’t Cheap
Chevrolet, Ford, GMC, and Ram are all promoting lease deals on their full-size trucks around $200 a month. But they’re all expensive to get started on, requiring up to $9907 at signing. If you really want to lease a new GMC Sierra, keep in mind that you’re not paying only $179 a month.
('You Might Also Like',)
