Jalopnik: leasing

Spanish Bank Giving Away Free Citroen With New Account

Wes Siler — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:20:00 EDT

Open a saving account with Spanish bank Banesto and they’ll give you a brand new, all-expenses-paid car. To qualify for a vehicle, a customer needs to lock between $26,400 and $235,000 into an account for at least 24 months, with the type of vehicle offered depending on how much one invests. For $235,000 and 36 months, you receive a Citroen C4 diesel, $175,000 a Citroen C3 and $145,000 a C2. Of course, there’s a catch.

Bank customers opting for the cars do so in lieu of interest. So you’re locking up to $235,000 away for three years with no growth. We’re also presuming the cars are leased, and need to be returned at the end of the two- or three-year period. So we’re not actually sure if this is a good deal.

Let’s assume you can earn 3.5% interest a year on your money. On $235,000, that’s $685 a month. A C4 diesel can be leased from $300-400 a month, we’ll assume another $200 for insurance, which still brings us in a little under that $685. Of course, the bank is probably getting some kind of bulk discount and doing the financing itself, so won’t be paying interest on its own vehicle loan. In other words, Banesto is making a healthy profit by offering cars instead of interest. Don’t have $235,000 to invest? Piaggio scooters are available to customers stashing away fewer Euros. [via Money.co.uk]

GM Plans Lease Tweaks To Encourage Consumers To Buy What They Can Afford

Andrew Stoy — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:30:00 EDT

Automotive News reports GM sales chief Mark LaNeve sent a letter to dealers outlining the company's plans to adjust its leasing strategy. GM's letter follows a move last week on leases by Chrysler. While the company won't be going down the same route, having their captive finance entity ditch leasing altogether, they're expected to tweak the terms on certain vehicles to make leases more expensive, in an effort to make buying more attractive. In LaNeve's words, "current financial pressures will continue to affect our perspective on leasing." But how will it affect consumers' perspectives on leasing?

Jalopnik Snap Judgment: How the loss of leasing business affects auto sales remains to be seen, but if automakers are getting clobbered on the residuals, taking a loss on each lease just to bump the sales tally doesn't make much sense either. The recent leasing changes may actually be an example of the forward thinking we tend to criticize our American automakers for not implementing often enough. If, at the same time, they offer lower-interest financing and continue to provide cash-back incentives, it could force consumers into smaller new cars or purchasing used cars, since the option of leasing more car than they could buy will no longer be available. [Automotive News (Sub. Req.)]

Pole-sitting Duc-mounted Casey Stoner put...

Davey G. Johnson — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 17:45:00 EDT

Pole-sitting Duc-mounted Casey Stoner put the knee pucks to the asphalt and dropped a Laguna Seca lap record in practice. The decimating digits? 1:21:975 [San Jose Mercury-News, Live lap timer at MotoGP.com]

The US House Loves the Lease Deals

Ray Wert — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 11:00:50 EST

It's that time of year again when the Detroit Free Press publishes the results of their annual Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request list of House members paying for leases using their office budgets.

A first glance at the monthly lease payments members are making may make you wonder whether your Congressman (or woman) has even the slightest clue about how to "deal" with a car salesperson. The Freep definitely is pushing the populist shtick by merely providing the monthly cost for the lease. The problem highlighted to me by two house offices we spoke with this morning is a bit more nuanced than the Freep leads you to believe...

The problem is that the rules of the US Congress allow members and their staff to be reimbursed $0.405 per mile. And as was pointed out to me by a staffer of a member not mentioned in the story:

"We have a reimbursement rate of $0.405 per mile for members and staff when they drive their own car, and my member drives around 4,300 miles a month. In one month, if we were to reimburse, taxpayers would be footing the bill for just over $1,700. It just makes sense to lease these vehicles...the bigger problem is that Congress shouldn't be paying that much per mile in reimbursement. If the leadership were to pass a reduction in that rate or reimbursement it would lower the incentive to lease and increase the incentive for members to use their own vehicles."

And that argument makes sense to us. A closer look at the numbers seems to provide proof for what the staffers were saying. The members with the districts where public transportation exists, or where geographic distances are small, like Rep. Anthony Weiner of NYC (yes Weiner and member in the same sentence, get the chuckles out now kiddies), tend to have the lowest cost leases.

It makes it easy to lease a vehicle at a reasonable price when you're looking at putting 1,000 miles or less per month on your car. It's not so easy when you're putting 4,000 or more miles per month on your car. In addition, because leadership in Congress aren't willing to drop the reimbursement rate, they are forced to either inefficiently use their own car or inefficiently lease their a car. Gotta love the US government.

Public pays millions for lawmaker car leases [Freep]

I Wanna Lease You a Gay Car! Gay Car! Gay Car!

Davey G. Johnson — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 17:25:08 EST

The people at GayCar have something to put you in. It's the UK's first (and most likely the world's first) gay car leasing company. We're not quite sure why the world needs a gay auto leasing company, but there's something in us (besides that four-inch plug) that kinda makes us happy that there is one, even if it strikes us as somewhat of a silly exercise in identity politics.

TopGay Takes Pleasure in Announcing the Launch of Gay Car The worlds first Gay Vehicle Leasing Company [TopGay]

Volkswagen Offers New Jetta, Passat Lease Deals

Mike Spinelli — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:39:12 EST

Volkswagen hopes that, if it can't sell its Passats and Jettas outright, it'll at least be able to loan them out to people for a couple of years. Following a 21.4 percent year-on-year drop in VW brand sales this past October, the company is offering new, subsidized lease deals with the intent to stimulate a pickup in sales. According to AutoWeek it's a change in attitude from "profits first" to move some freaking product, now. The 39-month deals — through January 3 — are no-money-down offers with monthly payments set at $249 for the Jetta and $299 for the Passat.

Volkswagen of America subsidizes leases of new Passat, Jetta in effort to help stem sales slide [AutoWeek]

Related:
Is Volkswagen Pulling Phaeton From US Market? [internal]

What Would Walter Preston Brownlow Drive? Leased Cars of the US Congress

Mike Spinelli — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 11:23:31 EDT

Beltway rag, The Hill offers a quick-and-dirty (it is Washington, you know) on the practice of using official funds to lease vehicles for lawmakers' personal use. It seems congresspeople get to lease cars for two years, spending an average of $646.53 per month in taxpayer dollars. And they're not exactly riding in The People's Econoboxes, either. Among the 122 cars leased by 115 lawmakers (seven of them get two?), as writer Jonathan E. Kaplan points out, many are gas guzzlers, including Cadillac Devilles for NY's Charlie Rangel (D) and Michigan's Carolyn Kilpatrick (D).

What's more, some aren't even 'merican like NY Democrat Maurice Hinchey's BMW 525 and Florida Republican Tom Feeney's Nissan Pathfinder. Kaplan also lashed out at New York reps like Vito Fossella (R) of Staten Island (Jeep Grand Cherokee) who lease cars when "public transportation and cabs are readily available," as if Staten Island wasn't like two time zones from Manhattan.

Lawmakers are leasing gas guzzlers [The Hill]