The Hyundai Veloster N is a serious hot hatchback. And with a starting price of just under $28,000, it’s a pretty good value too. That is, unless you try to lease it.
Our friends at CarsDirect.com got some lease figures on the N and they are laughably bad. Their senior pricing analyst Alex Bernstein ran some numbers on the Veloster N in the LA market:
The brand’s first lease on the Veloster N starts at $429 for 36 months with $2,299 due at signing. It includes an allowance of 12,000 miles per year and is based on an MSRP of $27,785. That’s the standard version with a 250 hp engine and 6-speed manual rather than the 275 hp mill you get with the $2,100 Performance Package.
When you factor the payment and amount due at signing, the effective cost of this lease comes out to $493/month.
It should be noted that sport compacts and hot hatchbacks are historically cars that don’t have the best lease programs, but leasing a 250 horsepower Hyundai for almost $500 per month is especially insane.
There are three main reasons for this bonkers high lease price. First, there are no major rebates or discounts on the Veloster N, which isn’t terribly surprising since it just hit the market. Second, the money factor (which is essentially an interest rate) on this lease is 0.00226 which translates to an APR of about 5.4 percent.
Finally, the Veloster N is not predicted to hold its value very well, with its residual at 52 percent. All of these things combine into a perfect storm of a very expensive lease.
Alex then goes to compare the Veloster N with its competition, namely the Subaru WRX and the Volkswagen GTI. A WRX with an MSRP of $28,008 would have an effective lease cost of $390 a month and the GTI, with a sticker price of $28,410, would come in around $408 per month. That’s a huge gap for similar performing cars and the same price point. You could also get the $35,000 Kia Stinger with glorious rear-wheel drive 2.0T for around $422 per month.
The Veloster N’s current lease programs illustrate an important point: just because a car has an affordable MSRP doesn’t mean that the lease programs are competitive. With leases, it really pays to cross-shop similar cars because the payments between various models can vary greatly.