Lease Or Buy Used

[xx396]

I'm having a bit of a dilemma trying to decide on my next car. My 01 Mercedes C Coupe 180 Petrol Auto has had its day but I still love how it looks and can't bare the thought of downgrading! The only car I like more from a cosmetic point of view is the IS220/250. Realisticly I feel like the 220d is about the limit of my budget, or more accurately although I could afford it the 250 is starting to cost too much when compared to a more down to earth car. The entry level 220d can be had leased for £3250 a year which didn't seem bad. I think when I come to part ex the Merc, I'll be looking at having lost £2100 a year, with road tax and the loss of interest not having all that extra money tied up in savings, its more like £2600 before you consider extra maintenance. Although its an option I hear nothing of problems and satisfaction issues with the car. I guess with it being 08 a lot of it will have gone and be under warranty anyway. I'm also not a fussy driver when it comes to how well the thing drives, I'm nuch more into comfort, looks and reliability. With considering a 10k a year lease I'm obviously a very light user probably more like 7-8k and so am not a candidate for a diesel at all but if its just one service under the lease, cheaper fuel and a much cheaper car in the first place it has to be considered. To buy the car 06 would probably be 10500-11000 from an independent same as my last car and I'd like this for the comfort of not having to keep it in tip top shape and worry about dings and so forth. But again I'm not your typical diesel user and worried about that and maintaining a first gen version. I don't think I'd ever buy the petrol, its starting to look a bit expensive and the fear of 2010+ road tax just puts me off completely. The lease on it is about £3750 for an IS250 Auto SR but I'm finding it difficult to commit to any option in these hard times when I can get say a Accord Saloon 04 for around £5500! I don't know how much this kind of thing would cost a year and I'd appreciate some feedback on just how much we pay extra for these prestige brands. But its just, well so boring! I can't see any other car on the road that I'd be truly happy with. I suppose going new you have less big bill worries under warranty so you're paying for that privilege. I've never really had anything with any car as I'm quite happy to drive them with problems and use independent servicing. My Merc has limp mode problems now and lots of other niggles and my car before that was the same. I'm sure if I took it to the main agent they'd want to charge me a *lot* of money but it still drives and has cost barely anything to maintain. Maybe some service bill nightmare stories will sway me to the Lex!

[shoggy]

Lexus Lease Finance

Make sure the deal is right for you, But be careful

I signed for 30,000 / anum @ 90k = 3years

Lease with full maintenance @ £710.00 inc VAT / pmonth with 2k plus deposit

Unfortunately I change my work role and became office based one month into the contract, and will not even do 10k a year now and they won't re assess for 12 months.

However they have agreed to drop some and am at present paying £635.00 for time being which was very good of them seeing how they didn't have to as in the small print !

Reveiw the contract in feb 2009

[Scarlet Pimpernell]

I've always bought the car...

You have to do the calculations and see if it fits and take things like servicing costs into account too. I found that the PCP was actually costing a fortune over 3 years (both BMW and Lexus), enough to almost buy the car outright - so I just went for HP. You can normally "haggle" the HP % rate, but it's much harder with PCP, where it's normally a higher %age. It's a calculator jobby.

The other thing to remember is that with HP you can keep the car as long as you want...

With both though, you end up paying the interest no matter what - even with PCP - the interest is charged on the full amount at the start. So if they say there is a "balloon" at the end that you don't have to pay, you do have to pay the interest on it...it's just a way of keeping the payments down.