US Car buying fun

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Make it happen dude :cool:

Or a brown Oldsmobile with a vinyl roof.
 
Seriously, I have my lease car already picked for when I move! :D
If it's what you're after, leasing in the US is too good of an opportunity to pass up. You can get some serious metal for not a lot of money. From what I have seen, the second hand car market there is overpriced compared to what we are used to.

Are you a "van guy"? A kitted out G20 is doable :D
 
MrLOL said:
"shock as fox failis to notice i was exaggerating to make a point" shocker
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dont be daft

if literally nobody bought cars what the hell would they do with all the cars once the lease finished ?

They'd be stock piling them in the deserts of arizona if noobody kept a car for more than 2/3 years.
 
Yet again though, everyone here is hung up on the GBP to $ conversion. I'll state this again and maybe this time it might sink in, *It's only cheap if you earn in GBP and buy in USD .

An average salary in the US isn't that much higher than that of the UK, in fact it's almost identical. How much does a 3 series cost to lease in the UK? I'd wager it's probably less in GBP than it is in USD. A brand new C2S in the UK is what, 60k? I paid over $100k for mine.

Also the lease you see isn't the final price, there's taxes to be rolled in and then if you don't want to get shafted on the return of the car, you need to include the money for the panel resprays and dent removal. (We have bugs out here that eat the paint on the car even if you wash them off within a couple of hours). Then don't forget that America is a lot larger than the UK, a 10k lease often won't cut it out here as a daily driver, which bumps the expense even more.

I'm just trying to put something into perspective here for everyone that loves to say the US is "so much cheaper", it isn't if you live here, believe me. I earn very good money and I still cringe at the thought of having to drop $800 for a new graphics card, rather than the 400 back in the UK. The US is only cheap if you're moving here or are earning foreign currency. If you live and work here, you do not see the benefits.
 
$800 for a new graphics card thats £400 in the USA? £430 buys you a GTX580 here. These cards are $500+tax (So what, $550?) not $800.

Since when has the price of computer hardware here been $2:£1?

Your Porsche sounds like an outlyer because a £40,000 BMW 335i is $43k+tax MSRP not $80k.
 
5970 when it came out varied between $700-$815.

Go to the Porsche USA site and spec up a 911 C2S, you'll be the wrong side of $100k before you even know it.

Certain car manufacturers are *very* expensive over here, yet some get nicely discounted. The 335i *starts* at $43k and that's without any taxes or options.

My point is simply that people need to stop harping on about how cheap it is in the US. Unless you're earning almost double the wage you're getting in the UK, it's not cheaper at all.
 
I've never lived there but when I last went there, food was cheaper, hotels were cheaper, care rental was considerableycheaper, fuel was cheaper and thats even with a frankly shocking exchange rate of £1 : $1.47.

Add this to the fact everyone on the American BMW forums over the age of about 19 appears to have a new or nearly new car whereas most people on the UK equivilent forums are driving around in 10 year old ones and you can see where people get the idea from?
 
If you're living there earning USD then it really isn't all that cheap to live. It may seem cheap with your GBP thinking cap on.

Based on what I've seen, a $50k salary in the US will not provide the same sort of lifestyle and disposable income a £50k salary would in the UK. Obviously that's going to be variable and subjective and depends on a lot of things but this is what I have noticed purely as an observation.

From my limited research, car leasing in the US is still relatively cheaper when compared to the UK. However as Iceman has now pointed out, there could be a lot of hidden costs on top of that. Now that I think of it, some states have ridiculous registration fees. For example, in Louisiana, if you buy a second hand car in another state and register it there, you have to pay sales tax on the value of the car on top of your registration fee.
 
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But this is because you don't live here. Stop converting. Exchange rates DO NOT matter when you live and earn in a country. You just said yourself that there's a 1:1.47 ratio in the favour of the GBP. That means, if you moved to the USA, lets say you were earning 50k a year in the UK and kept the same salary in the USA, 50k p/a, you would be spending *more* of your money on every day things than in the UK.

With the USD to GBP, when you move here you have to equate them 1:1, because there is no conversion factor if your salary remains unchanged, which my average salary point reinforced.

So with that in mind, let me give you a choice. You earn 50k in the UK and you want to buy a new R8, it costs what 80k basically in the UK. Now you can move to the USA, still earning 50k but now that same car has a starting price of 114,200 + tax. Which would you rather buy?

I'm not saying that there aren't perks to living here or any other country. My point is simply that exchange rates mean damn all when you've moved or are earning the native currency.
 
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