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This is why most people (huh?) who desire luxury german vehicles lease them. Let some other sucker deal the with inevitable problems after the lease is up.
Some folks don't want to rent a new car or finance a depreciating asset.
Purchasing the right pre-owned German car for cash while protecting oneself with a comprehensive pre-purchase inspection can easily allow for a positive ownership experience.
Just curious where your data comes from that makes you conclusively say "most people..."?
Some folks don't want to rent a new car or finance a depreciating asset.
Purchasing the right pre-owned German car for cash while protecting oneself with a comprehensive pre-purchase inspection can easily allow for a positive ownership experience.
Just curious where your data comes from that makes you conclusively say "most people..."?
I guess I should say most people I know. I'm a doctor in the suburbs of NYC and pretty much every doc I know who wants to do the BMW/Audi/Merc thing leases it. They also write it off as a business expense.
Me, I'm a cheap bastard, so I bought a CPO Infiniti (poor man's fake luxury brand) with full cash. I let the original sucker who leased it take the depreciation hit and I get japanese reliability.
You didn't contract for the inspection, and the Audi dealership had an inspection performed at Mercedes that addressed the issue, the check engine light being illuminated. That's what the dealership is likely to say. How many miles are on the car? If you are over 100k, that can limit your ability to seek redress on the issue, depending upon the state.
I don't know why you would cause a scene at Mercedes. They did not do anything to you, and are responsible to the party who paid for the inspection or work on the car, not the secondary party who purchased the vehicle. You can have them perform another inspection that shows the issues, and use that to seek a remedy, i.e., filing suit and getting the prior report under subpoena to use in the proceedings to hopefully prove a correlation. If I were in their position, I would not release a copy to you because it's obvious that there's going to be a legal proceeding in this matter and I would not want to invite a suit from the other dealer.
Perhaps you can have the issue solved by a threat of a suit against the dealer. Have an attorney draft a letter and seek remedy without a lawsuit. However, I not drive the car until it was satisfactorily resolved. Consult an attorney to see what your rights are in Illinois, someone experienced with lemon law issues as mentioned upthread would be a good place to start.
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All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
~William Shakespeare (As You Like It Act II, Scene VII)
People that can't actually AFFORD a luxury German vehicle lease them to get a false sense of affluence.
Your understanding of leasing is off the mark. People who actually have money and understand how complicated financial products work realize that there are scenarios under which leasing comes out ahead, even as compared to a cash purchase.
First off, nobody with half a brain pays cash for a new car with interest rates as low as they are right now (and the stock market doing as well as it is). If you buy a $40k car with cash instead of financing it at 1% or less, you're just taking $14,000 and lighting it on fire. Smart people don't do that. $40k invested at 8% earns >$16,000 in 5 years, a 1% loan costs $3,200 over the same term. This is VERY conservative- my S&P mutual fund is over 20% this year, and 50% for a 5 year period.
Second, leasing is nothing more than a fancy version of a car loan except that it shifts a risk onto the bank. Interest rates on leases are still in the sub-1% territory at most manufacturers, but you're forcing the bank to place a bet on what it thinks the car will be worth in 3 years. If the bank underestimates the residual, no harm no foul if you want to keep the car (but if you plan to turn it in, you lose in the form of too-high lease payments). If it overestimates, you've just paid less than what you should have paid over 3 years and you can negotiate to buy the car at the actual market value in 3 years, thereby "skipping" a portion of the value of the car and pushing it onto the bank (or just turn it in and buy the identical car on the used market). Plus, if you hate the car you get a "get out of jail free" card in 3 years by being able to turn the car in without having to haggle over trade-in value.
Compare this to a standard car loan where you pay 100% of the cost of the car no matter what. You're still 600% better off than paying cash, but you lose out on the free 3-year test drive and the potential to shave another couple thousand off of the total cost.
The biggest win is when the manufacturer institutes large reductions off of MSRP. Let's use 10% off of a 50k car, and assume that car has a 60% residual (pretty close figures to my last lease but rounded). The cash buyer gets $5k off of $50k, a 10% discount. Big woop. But the lease buyer was only going to pay for the first 40% of the car to begin with- 20k all in... but gets $5k off of that figure since residuals are pegged at MSRP and are not reduced by discounts. The lease buyer gets a full 25% off the cost of the lease- $15k instead of $20k.
If the leasing party repeats this 3 times over 9 years, this person will get 3 brand new cars for 9 years for a total cost of $45k. The cash/loan buyer will get 1 car over 9 years for $45k and by years 5-9 will have to start dealing with maintenance headaches (and by year 9, the embarrassment of pulling into the executive garage in a 9 year old car... kidding, but only sort of). Also, the lease buyer only pays a third of the sales tax at each transaction instead of the full boat in year 0.
So, in summary, leasing (under certain circumstances) can be better than financing. And either leasing or financing are ALWAYS better than paying cash when interest rates are low, by an enormous margin.
Last edited by NYCresident2014; 11-22-2017 at 11:41 AM..
I just got a copy of the inspection report by walking into the dealer and asking for it. It’s damning.
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