Good lease deals on less than great cars

Soldato
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A place to post up/discuss good lease deals.

I have been toying with the idea of going lease now my annual mileage is under 10k.

Thinking of fiesta ST/golf/mazda 3

where are the best places too look for these lease deals

(started another thread to stop people moaning in the other thread, They don't like us peasants in there)
 
Soldato
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The pistonheads threads are sometimes a good place, but often the less desirable deals get lost in a lot of talk about 'why' lease deals over buy, finance, loan etc. And also because a lot of folk on there talk about hiring the more high end versions of most cars, or the premium marques.

www.contracthireandleasing.com is usually a good place to start. Email a few select lease companies and get put on their mailing lists (there's a few guys on the pistonheads forum who work for lease companies and will take your requirements also and email any decent deals), trawl like a man possessed and hope you hit a good deal!.....

As an example I was looking for a deal on something like a Seat Leon or VW Golf when the wife's company car went back. Had pretty much got it to a Leon FR diesel for a 3+23+£250 fee deal at £240 a month (£6490 - £18.5k at Broadspeed so roughly 35% of cost new, so not a fantastic deal) when I hit on a decent deal for a Merc a180d Sport on a 1+23 deal at £229 (£5496 - £21.3k at Broadspeed so roughly 26% of new cost, which anything at ~25% I consider a great deal) totally by accident, I had one as a replacement car whilst the wife's car was being repaired before going back so just googled them. The lower you can get the % to buy price the better, and that's when the deals add up.

Then you can spend an age on working out whether leasing or financing/loan is the right thing for you at that point in time.

For me getting a really good lease deal is about not being fixed to a certain make/model, be flexible and there are some out there.
 
Man of Honour
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For me getting a really good lease deal is about not being fixed to a certain make/model, be flexible and there are some out there.

This is absolutely key. As a rule, a lease is the most expensive way to have a car. It generally doesn't get more expensive than leasing.

The exceptions come when there are manufacturer supported deals - perhaps to lift sales of a flagging model or to generate quality used stock for a few years time or whatever.

It is THESE deals that it's crucial to get. This means, to get a good leasing deal you need to:

a) Not have a specific car in mind. If you want a BMW 325d with Option X, Y and Z leasing is not for you. If you want 'some sort of premium saloon' and you don't care what, leasing might work.
b) Not order any factory options. Options are almost always charged at full price divided by the term, its a ripoff.
c) Be aware that most of these deals are for low mileages and ensure you either do low mileage or have factored the excess mileage cost into the deal
d) Make sure you amortise the deposit over the term to give you an effective monthly cost! It's no good saying WOW ONLY 90 QUID A MONTH if the deposit is £3k!
 
Soldato
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[TW]Fox;29205213 said:
This is absolutely key. As a rule, a lease is the most expensive way to have a car. It generally doesn't get more expensive than leasing.

The exceptions come when there are manufacturer supported deals - perhaps to lift sales of a flagging model or to generate quality used stock for a few years time or whatever.

It is THESE deals that it's crucial to get. This means, to get a good leasing deal you need to:

a) Not have a specific car in mind. If you want a BMW 325d with Option X, Y and Z leasing is not for you. If you want 'some sort of premium saloon' and you don't care what, leasing might work.
b) Not order any factory options. Options are almost always charged at full price divided by the term, its a ripoff.
c) Be aware that most of these deals are for low mileages and ensure you either do low mileage or have factored the excess mileage cost into the deal
d) Make sure you amortise the deposit over the term to give you an effective monthly cost! It's no good saying WOW ONLY 90 QUID A MONTH if the deposit is £3k!

Yup, very good points. When the time comes to sell my VRS, I'll be looking at what I can get for it and working how much I've paid on Tax, insurance etc, and then working out what costs more monthly on average over a 3 year term. The MKIII VRS PCH deal from Skoda looks good, but like you say, the deposit is £2k, so with the deposit, monthly fee, insurance etc, I'd be looking at £10k after 3 years. What I want to do is work out what I think I could get back by selling my car after three years (estimate I'd get about £3.5k-4k for it) and what I've spent on insurance etc and compare the two.

Granted you can hardly compare like for like a brand new lease car against a 5 year old (when I bought it) used car with 60k, but no matter what car you buy (unless you look for something that you can guarantee to hold value like a collectable) it is going to cost you money, whether it be depreciation or 'rent'.

SO far, unless I'm doing it very wrong, the leasing option is quite a bit more than simply buying an older car used, but then that makes sense really. It's a choice of spending less and paying to fix issues as they arise, or lease a brand new car and get them sorted under warranty, but risk getting robbed if they deem damage to the car (scuffs etc) to be user fault.
 
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Soldato
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Spot on Fox about the options, I really wanted an Auto but I wasn't paying the £1500 cost for someone else to get the benefit at the end of the lease, same with metallic paint at £500.

There are exceptions as the Clio I also have came with a couple of options added on by the lessor (?) such as metallic paint, so always worth asking the broker if there are any free options available.

The Clio is 4p a mile excess, the Merc is 7p a mile. I've seen some at 18-20p a mile excess for some premium marques.
 
Soldato
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Back to the point of the thread, CVL have some special offers on 5dr Golf GTD manuals:

£2k + 23, 5k miles, £162/month inc VAT. £5,726 total (£2,863/year)

1+23, 5k miles, £258/month inc VAT. £6,192 total (£3,096/year)

Admittedly 5k miles is a bit crap especially on a diesel. I'm waiting to hear back on some quotes for different deposits and mile allowances.
 
Associate
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Anyone tried any of the recent Audi A4 deals? I dont know why these lease sites dont update deals that are no longer available on their site - inquired about the 1.4tfsi deal out of interest which no longer seems to be available due to the high demand and the 150ps tdi sline deal is no longer available as "it was very high spec and they couldnt get a million miles towards that spec with the fleet they have now" :(
 
Caporegime
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Wow, 5k, ouch. Thats the kind of limit that's going to make you reluctant to actually use the car you have paid for.

When I asked for quotes for higher mileage allowances they always came back more than just paying the excess mileage charge. So I've taken a least at 8k a year, expecting (and budgeting) to do more like double that.
 
Soldato
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VW are one of the better mileage costs, think when I enquired on a couple it was 6p + VAT per additional mile, so on 5000 miles that's £360 per year to settle at the end of the contract or an amortised cost of an additional £30 per month. One thing to check (and get in writing) is that there is no ceiling to the additional miles you can do over the length of the contract.
 
Caporegime
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7.2p (6p +VAT) is the charge I have on a Skoda lease taken out in November, and as you say all the other VW brand leases I looked at were the same.
 
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