Car Shopping Time!

[ChetlovesMer]

12 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

Car loan

leasing (1% APR)

Loan amount = 35317 - 20,000 trade in = 15317. Which has great impact on the next vehicle you buy.

Lease, you may put down 14254, but the dealership can sell that car for 21,000. Why would they sell it for 15746, especially if you didn’t pay much of the lease interest. 

I feel like your scenario may be a rare situation that you better hope the dealership is doing you a solid. 

No no no no... there's no "doing a solid". You can get a lease in which you have buy option at the end. The buy option is fixed price and is known before you enter the lease. 

 

[iacas]

1 hour ago, saevel25 said:

Yea, I’ve been looking at the GT options to see if I can sneak in a turbo engine on a car that usually doesn’t get one. Sometimes you can get a better deal because it’s not advertised as a sports performance car. 

My CX-5 has a turbo. So does the CX-30. And others.

1 hour ago, ChetlovesMer said:

Dude, you are missing a big point. When you bought your car money was cheap. I'll bet your financing is 2.9% or lower. 

No, I'm not Chet. Where did I talk about interest rates? I've looked at leasing a few times. It has never made any sense.

1 hour ago, ChetlovesMer said:

But lately, there have been a lot of lease options an 0.9% or so.

I didn't really even comment on lease rates or interest rates. If you keep a car for more than x years, leasing almost never makes sense. x is sometimes a pretty small number. It might "make sense" for that car but then the next car, you've got no equity, no trade-in…

1 hour ago, ChetlovesMer said:

so really you are just paying lower interest on the first 30% or so of your car's value

And you can only drive it 10,000 miles a year, or 12k.

20 minutes ago, ChetlovesMer said:

No no no no... there's no "doing a solid". You can get a lease in which you have buy option at the end. The buy option is fixed price and is known before you enter the lease.

No they're not — they're written down but you can always negotiate it. I've known people that have extended leases, ended them early, purchased them at a different rate, etc. All sorts of things are possible.

[ChetlovesMer]

9 minutes ago, iacas said:

I didn't really even comment on lease rates or interest rates. If you keep a car for more than x years, leasing almost never makes sense. x is sometimes a pretty small number. It might "make sense" for that car but then the next car, you've got no equity, no trade-in.

Huh? ... You own the car either way. 

12 minutes ago, iacas said:

No they're not — they're written down but you can always negotiate it. I've known people that have extended leases, ended them early, purchased them at a different rate, etc. All sorts of things are possible.

Of course you can. 

13 minutes ago, iacas said:

And you can only drive it 10,000 miles a year, or 12k.

Not if you are going to purchase it after your lease is up. Then it doesn't matter how much you drive. You only have to pay for the "extra miles" if you return the car to the dealer. (Again, depending on the lease.) 

I'm sorry, I'm in a training class for work otherwise I'd lay out a scenario or two where you can save money by leasing, then buying the car. You'll end up owning the car at the end either way.

Again, I'm not saying its right for everyone, or that its always a better option. But there are scenarios in which leasing can save you money AND you end up owning the car. 

[Carl3]

I am overdue for a new car because there had been no cars available when it was time, so I gave up. Would love to buy a Honda CRV EXL with AWD for the sticker price. Also would be interested in a similar trim Toyota RAV4. Anyone know how Honda and Toyota are faring with availability? I have not really looked for about a year. Need to start paying attention 

[iacas]

Chet, you keep assuming that you're buying after the lease is up. That's not often what occurs, and yes, you can create some scenarios where it's cheaper, but… for many, if they're going to just own the car anyway, they'd rather just own it. Please stop making assumptions. Nobody's said owning is ALWAYS better than leasing, just that it's often better than leasing… because most leases don't end in purchases.

[klineka]

I don't have much experience with the specific cars you mentioned, but I do have experience in the EV world having owned a Tesla Model 3 for 3+ years now.

At my old house I did have enough room to run a new circuit/breaker to support the 240v charging and the panel was in my basement and it backed up to the garage wall so that was an easy install that I did myself. There are some ways you can combine multiple breakers into one slot which might free up enough space in your box without needing to run a sub panel. Just depends on how things are configured. In my new build they wired it directly to where I wanted it in the garage. I get about 10% of battery life per hour added when charging. So I could arrive home with say 10% battery left and have a full charge by morning no problem.

Whether or not an EV makes sense largely depends on your driving habits. If you're in a sales role and have to drive 250 miles per day I wouldn't recommend it. But if you work from home, have a short commute, etc it can work for a lot of people.

It might be worth a look in your case if you plan on keeping the Hyundai, you could daily drive the EV and keep the Hyundai for longer road trips until the non-Tesla/Supercharger infrastructure catches up. Right now the Tesla supercharger network is leaps and bounds better than the other options that exist. That shouldn't really be a deterrent for you though if you're keeping the second car. We have the Model 3 and a Rav4 Hybrid right now and it works perfectly for us having 1 EV and 1 gas vehicle.

There are definitely some nice qualities about EVs. The instant torque is always fun and can actually be quite useful like when merging onto the highway, changing lanes, etc. I enjoy how quickly the A/C and heat respond, no waiting for the engine to warm up to then start blowing warm air in the winter. I also enjoy not having to carry around a physical key fob. The Tesla key is your phone and then a backup one is a credit card sized piece of plastic that fits in my wallet. Since I never leave home without my phone and wallet it is just one less thing I have to worry about carrying, finding, losing, etc.

Let me know if you have any other EV questions!

 

10 hours ago, Carl3 said:

I am overdue for a new car because there had been no cars available when it was time, so I gave up. Would love to buy a Honda CRV EXL with AWD for the sticker price. Also would be interested in a similar trim Toyota RAV4. Anyone know how Honda and Toyota are faring with availability? I have not really looked for about a year. Need to start paying attention 

FWIW, my wife drives a 2020 Rav4 Hybrid XSE and we really like it. It has relatively low miles (~25k in 3 years) since we drive my EV most places but the Rav4 has been on numerous golf trips and family vacations and has been perfectly fine with no issues. We've just done the regular oil changes so far and that's been it. She gets 36.0mpg too. It has plenty of nice features, all the lane keep assist stuff, heated seats and steering wheel, panoramic sunroof that goes all the way to the back, larger infotainment screen, etc. Plus the XSE trim adds some nice visual touches like blue stitching on the interior, black rims, additional black trim, etc.

Edited December 13, 2023 by klineka

[billchao]

Kia K5 GT is on the list, but not the Stinger?

[ChetlovesMer]

10 hours ago, iacas said:

Chet, you keep assuming that you're buying after the lease is up. 

Yes, that is what I said at the very beginning. If you want to own a car, you can save money buy leasing it. ... Sometimes. Depending on financing. 

16 hours ago, ChetlovesMer said:

Hey Stu, I might suggest the opposite could also be true. Sometimes leasing makes sense if you are going to keep a car for 10 years. 
Sometimes loan rates are 6 or 7% and lease rates are 0.9%. 

Here's how it works.

Let's say your monthly budget is $700 for a car payment and you have $10K in your pocket to put as a down payment. 

For sake of discussion let's say you want to pay for 60 months, let's say registration and fees are $2K. Let's set tax at 7.5%. For sake of this example, let's say an auto loan is 7.9% on that car during the time you want to buy it. (That's probably extreme, but not uncommon, and currently all that's available on some vehicles.) 

If you do the math on that, it means you can buy a $45,000 car. Which you could do AND often should do. You'll make a payment of $700 per month for 60 months. This is OFTEN the best option. However, another option, which can be better is to lease it, and THEN buy it. 

A 36 month lease at 0.9% with $10K down will cost you about $280 per month. 

Here's what you can consider... You don't have to. But if you want to save money, you can consider leasing it for $280 per month, but you still spend $700 per month. You pay $280 on the lease, put the other $420 into a money market account. At the end of the lease you will likely owe about $22K-$28K to buy the car. It may be a bit higher it may be lower depending on the car and your negotiation. This can be negotiated ahead of time, which I definitely suggest, or wait until after the lease and you may or may not get a better deal. (Sometimes the dealer may have too many used cars on their lot and their happy to negotiate to not add another. Sometimes the opposite is true. But that's hard to know 36 months ahead of time.) 

Because you've been putting $420 per month into a money market account, you now have about $16K. (Maybe more if you can find a "good" money market account to put the money in.) Take that $16k and use it as a down payment on your new loan to buy the car. Then finance the rest over 60 months. Even at 7.9% your payment will be between 160 and 250 dollars per month. 

BUT - You still keep paying your $700 per month. Putting $160 to $250 toward the new loan, and the other $540 to $450 back into your money market account. In between 12 and 20 months you will have enough in the money market account to pay-off your new loan. Then you will own the car outright, just as you would have if you purchased it traditionally. 

So, if you just bought it normally, you would have paid $700 per month for 60 months. 

If you lease it first, then buy it, you end up paying $700 per month for 48 to 56 months. 

Either way, in the end you own the car. 

This is example works because of the 7.9 vs 0.9%. And that is exactly the option that was common a few months back and still out there for a lot of cars. There are a lot of "it depends". The big one is generally interest rates (usual break even point is about 4.5-5% difference between lease rate and finance rate. Unless you have access to a kick-ass money market account.) 

There are, of course, other pluses and minus. For a lease you'll need GAP insurance which is normally very cheap, usually cheaper than your standard insurance. Unless you are a "difficult to insure driver". You also generally get free maintenance on a leased vehicle, but that's sometimes available on a purchased vehicle now too. 

 

Please understand. I'm not suggesting this is ALWAYS better. Or even that it makes sense all the time. BUT I like @saevel25 and @StuM and I was just trying to help by suggesting taking a look at it. From what @saevel25 sent, it looks like he's getting a descent rate on the loan for the vehicle he's after (5.5%). So it may not apply, or it maybe cost neutral. I'm just trying to help. 

 

Now, I promise to drop the subject. 

 

 

 

[saevel25]

51 minutes ago, ChetlovesMer said:

Please understand. I'm not suggesting this is ALWAYS better. Or even that it makes sense all the time. BUT I like @saevel25 and @StuM and I was just trying to help by suggesting taking a look at it. From what @saevel25 sent, it looks like he's getting a descent rate on the loan for the vehicle he's after (5.5%). So it may not apply, or it maybe cost neutral. I'm just trying to help. 

Now, I promise to drop the subject. 

No that is fine. The 5.5% is just an assumption. I think I can get around there with my credit union. 

I ran this scenario in Excel.

Current Car Trade In: 12K
New Car: 35K
Loan APR: 6%
Lease APR: 1% (0.00042 Money Factor)

Scenario 1: Full loan using trade-in value as down payment.
Total Net: -7.9K (over 5 years)

Scenario 2: Lease for 2 years, then loan for 3 years. Using trade-in on loan only not on lease. Not something to do (see below).  Also, assuming saving the difference in payments for a down payment. 
Total Net: -3.9K (over 5 years)

If I am forced to buy the car at a re-sale value, which is about 10-12% higher than the residual value (trade-in value). Then the Total Net is -8K. So, the key to this situation is that you need to get a low APR on the lease, and you are able to buy the car at the residual value, not the re-sale value. If you can guarantee those two then you save some money leasing. 

Also, for those looking at lease deals. NEVER accept any lease deal that puts a lower lease monthly payment as long as you put down like 3-4K at signing. That is a horrible deal. It doesn't actually impact your overall payment by that much.

Should You Make a Down Payment When You Lease? | Edmunds

 

[iacas]

3 minutes ago, ChetlovesMer said:

This is example works because of the 7.9 vs 0.9%.

Yep. And it makes other assumptions as well:

• You want to buy the car at the end of the lease.
• There aren't other fees, etc. that you incur during the lease (you're required to do ALL maintenance and things during a lease, which costs you, or they dock you fees).
• You can still be on the hook for over-mileage fees and damage to the vehicle during the lease, because it's not legally binding that you're buying the car at the end.
• There are other lease hassles I won't get into.

[ChetlovesMer]

17 hours ago, iacas said:

My CX-5 has a turbo. So does the CX-30. And others.

My wife's CX-5 has a turbo, and a much better sound system than does my CX-50. 
The turbo and the sound system are both available on the CX-50, I just chose not to get them. 

[iacas]

1 minute ago, ChetlovesMer said:

My wife's CX-5 has a turbo, and a much better sound system than does my CX-50. 
The turbo and the sound system are both available on the CX-50, I just chose not to get them. 

Mazda's turbo is interesting. No real spool-up time at all.

I had just asked my Kia saleswoman about the spool-up time, she had just said "no, there isn't any" and I floored it (not quite, but you know what I mean) and… waited what felt like a full second for the turbo to spool up. Oy. Just one of many issues I had with the Kia saleswoman.

If I had really wanted the Kia I'd have definitely asked for someone different, as she was terrible.

P.S. As I understand it, the Mazdas partially cover or regulate the size of the turbo intake or out-take or something, so that it's basically almost always somewhat pressurized.

[ChetlovesMer]

3 minutes ago, iacas said:

Mazda's turbo is interesting. No real spool-up time at all.

I had just asked my Kia saleswoman about the spool-up time, she had just said "no, there isn't any" and I floored it (not quite, but you know what I mean) and… waited what felt like a full second for the turbo to spool up. Oy. Just one of many issues I had with the Kia saleswoman.

If I had really wanted the Kia I'd have definitely asked for someone different, as she was terrible.

P.S. As I understand it, the Mazdas partially cover or regulate the size of the turbo intake or out-take or something, so that it's basically almost always somewhat pressurized.

My old Mazda 6 (I loved that car by the way) had the turbo on the old Mazda V6 and it was great. Mine was a 2015 and it was also the last sedan they made with a proper transmission. (6 speed manual). I only put 250,000 miles on it, then I broke the serpentine belt and had like a half dozen other wear items that needed replacing, so it was time to let it go. 

I will say the CX-50 I have now, does everything well. I have precious few complaints. 

[Yukari]

Subaru WRX is a fun little car, especially in a manual transmission.

I love driving it around the open roads.

[saevel25]

5 minutes ago, Yukari said:

Subaru WRX is a fun little car, especially in a manual transmission.

I love driving it around the open roads.

So the issue is I never learned to drive a stick shift. So I’ll probably go with something with paddle shifters. Though I don’t think would be that big of an issue to learn to drive a stick shift.

[saevel25]

Some, some extensive online research... I am leaning towards. 

BMW 230i
BMW M240i
Audi S3
Audi RS3
Toyota GR86 (probably not, but it will remain here for a while)
Subaru WRX
Toyota Supra 2.0 (though the 3.0 would be fun!) 
Ford Mustang (just because it's fun to mess with the car builder, so many options! probably not going to stay)
Mercedes Benz AMG CLA 35 Coupe (looks fun) 
Mercedes Benz AMG CLA 45 Coupe (it has a drift mode, so honorarily put on the list) 

The issue I am finding is that getting a sportier version of a non-sporty sedan doesn't work out well in the reviews, especially for FWD cars. It is very common to spin out the front wheels or get major drift (left or right) when the turbo is engaged on a FWD car. The list above are cars built around the engine versus just dropping a higher HP engine in a typical sedan. 

 

[klineka]

5 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

Some, some extensive online research... I am leaning towards. 

BMW 230i
BMW M240i
Audi S3
Audi RS3
Toyota GR86 (probably not, but it will remain here for a while)
Subaru WRX
Toyota Supra 2.0 (though the 3.0 would be fun!) 
Ford Mustang (just because it's fun to mess with the car builder, so many options! probably not going to stay)
Mercedes Benz AMG CLA 35 Coupe (looks fun) 
Mercedes Benz AMG CLA 45 Coupe (it has a drift mode, so honorarily put on the list) 

The issue I am finding is that getting a sportier version of a non-sporty sedan doesn't work out well in the reviews, especially for FWD cars. It is very common to spin out the front wheels or get major drift (left or right) when the turbo is engaged on a FWD car. The list above are cars built around the engine versus just dropping a higher HP engine in a typical sedan. 

 

That's a fun looking list in that segment!

FWIW the Toyota GR86, aka Subaru BRZ is TINY. I wanted one for the longest time until I actually sat in one and had no space and my head would brush the ceiling when I had a hat on. I'm about 6'-3'' for reference. And it's underpowered IMO. 

The Supra is also tiny. When I'm standing outside of one the top of the roof barely reaches my chest. I didn't even bother trying to sit inside one when I was at the Toyota dealership.

Some of the other ones on the list just comes down to what you value more, performance or cost. Obviously an RS3 is going to have more performance than an S3 but the RS3 will cost more. Most of the interior features will be very similar between those two (if not identical) when comparing same trim levels. 

I'm sure you will, but try to test drive as many of those as possible. The fit and finish is going to vary significantly by brand too. 

Also as I'm sure you're aware some of those are coupes and some are sedans so take that into consideration as well. If you do go the coupe route, at least see what it's like sitting in the back seat while the front seats are in their normal positions. 

[saevel25]

44 minutes ago, klineka said:

FWIW the Toyota GR86, aka Subaru BRZ is TINY. I wanted one for the longest time until I actually sat in one and had no space and my head would brush the ceiling when I had a hat on. I'm about 6'-3'' for reference. And it's underpowered IMO. 

The Supra is also tiny. When I'm standing outside of one the top of the roof barely reaches my chest. I didn't even bother trying to sit inside one when I was at the Toyota dealership.

Thank you for the comments on that. 

44 minutes ago, klineka said:

Also as I'm sure you're aware some of those are coupes and some are sedans so take that into consideration as well. If you do go the coupe route, at least see what it's like sitting in the back seat while the front seats are in their normal positions. 

I am single, screw my friends 😛 . Gives me an excuse to not have to shuttle them around anymore 😉