Mikes2.7T

After leasing a wonderful '01 A6 2.7T for 36 months, and an '04 A8L for 42 months, I found myself faced with horrible lease pricing back in May and June when I was faced with the end-of-lease decision.

My monthly payment (including 5% MA sales tax) would have jumped from $960/month to more than $1,600 for an '07. I shopped this around with a couple of dealers and the results were essentially identical. Even A6 leases were around $1K/month.

The problem was that Audi Financial assigned *terrible* residual values to the entire A8 and A6 lines. The residual precentage on the A8's were actually worse than on the Dodge RAM 1500 pickup I leased recently. Trying to remember the specific residual quoted... I think it was 42% after 36 month. May have been 40%.

WTF?

Since this lease is for my 'company car', I couldn't keep messin' around with a replacement vehicle, so I ended up going in a very different direction and leased a CTS-V with a manual tranny. Way fun in a hot-rod, blast down the highway, sort of way, but I find myself really missing the A8 most of the time. And my wife *really* moans about the dearly departed A8. And when we do our long drives to visit family, I don't feel the love from her anymore ;-)

I caught a part of a post where the poster was complaining that Audi Financial doesn't currently have a lease package in place for A8's. What ??!!??

Audi lost me as a customer because of their terrible leasing terms, and I bet a bunch of other A8 installed base are chooing to move on.

Anyone have any idea what is going on with Audi's leasing? Any other stories of customers walking away from brand becasue of lease pricing issues?

Mike

Radiation Joe

I just couldn't get the numbers to work on the A8 lease.
The money factors seem to be ok, but the residuals kill the deal. I prefer Audi, but if things don't change I may jump ship back to BMW. Their residuals are industry leaders.

PaulW

For me it's looking really good, because I won't be ready to buy it for another 4-5 years! Holy Cow.....people who buy and lease A8's are really getting the wrong end of the stick these days!

D3AeighT

But oh soooo right. The last great lease deals on A8's was the '04's. I know, I got one. My residual was set at 52.3% on 36 MO & 15K Miles. Turned it in with 2 months left of lease, they CPO'd it and then I bought it back for $6,500 under residual. Of course I assume they had residual insurance to fall back on or the accounting geeks had set up a reserve years ago for this and were able to book it against it.

Me thinks AoA has had enough of it, the dollar is killing them and it's now coming home to roost, but they are going to be hurting their customer base big time. Not sure how BMW does it, guess volumes speak, but they do.

ESN

He correctly noted that Audis depreciate much quicker than BMW and MB and blamed it on the subsidies that pushed new car sales and leases. He said (again, correctly) that Audi was every bit the equal of the other German marques and asserted that he would be able to fix the problem by ending the artifically low residuals and sales incentives, yet at the same time continue to increase sales.

The result is that BMW and MB continue to push iron out the door with various incentives, while AoA is holding the line, so stepping into a new Audi now is considerably more expensive than moving to a comparable BMW or MB. Sales are suffering, what do you know about that!

PaulW

I am soooo happy I got the D2 S8.....holy cow is this thing a crazy machine! Handles incredible, with the recent "sport" mode enabled, it's on Viagra!!!! It's always slipping into traction control when in "S"quirt....

And the RNS-E, factory bluetooth and XM makes it oh so nicely updated.......

And owning a car that you basically know everything about already is really, really nice when you are modifying it!

ccap

and it blows the doors off the A6 4.2!!

I love the A8 and wish the numbers were better, but AFS loast another Audi Customer. I am coming out of an S4.

See ya Audi..Glad to be back to BMW

Arkay

When I saw the MF and residual numbers on the S8, I nearly passed out...

At the time I was considering it versus the S550 4matic, which had very strong numbers for a 39 months lease.

I decided to lease the E63 for 33 months which again has very strong residual from the MB Financial program: 66% on a 12,000 miles a year lease.

While the MSRP is slightly higher for the S8, I would've gladly leased the S8 if the lease numbers from AF were anywhere near reasonable compared to the other Teutonic marques.

D3AeighT

It's amazing what Audi did between '97-99' to '01 and on. I'm sure you feel like you've got a new "girl friend" on the side! lol, just kidding!

Inocent Bystndr

I ended up getting enough off the MSRP of the S6 that it leased about the same as the E63. I'm loving the S6 of course, but was very impressed by the E63s I checked out. One thing that made me lean to the S6 was that the E63 had no way to handle a BT connection for a Treo! So far, the S6 BT has been almost flawless.