Ok, so I'm in the market for a smoken S4. Test drove a stunning blue Avant today. LOVE. The Nav was great. SWEET engine. Excellent manual. I asked the very nice sales woman to get me some lease rates. The car I want stickers around $54K. (NAV and whatnot). I get an email tonight that it's going to be $1000 month. Or so. That's just plain nuts! I checked an online auto financing site and $50K at 6.5% comes to only $938. How does a lease cost MORE than financing? Do any of you lease this beast? I LOVE the car, but I'm not going to be raped for it. Ideas?

Thanks
A<ul><li><a href="http://www.fusefx.net">http://www.fusefx.net</a</li></ul>

people will always try to screw you...a good lease on an s4 should be between 700-800 bucks...depending on several factors. Where are you from...what city/state.

I'm in Minneapolis, MN.(Carousel Audi) I did send her an email telling her she's nuts and that she just lost a very serious buyer. I was expecting around $800 for that car. $1000 is RS4 money.

...because it is crazy high like your reporting. But you gotta do what you gotta do! To me, it's worth it. Audi's residual/MF's do suck right now, but a purchase was still going to be plenty more money a month plus some upfront, of which I paid zero, like most lease experts advise.

ps..you may have to log in separately to get the page to change the zip code, bla, bla..and the price is a bit less for the Avant than you are talking about.<ul><li><a href="http://www.audiusa.com/estimator/0,,status-P_countrycode-1_,00.html">http://www.audiusa.com/estimator/0,,status-P_countrycode-1_,00.html</a</li></ul>

It pertains to the RS4 Lease, but there are some spreadsheets that you can use for any lease.<ul><li><a href="http://webpages.charter.net/parkhill/RS4/Financial/AFSLeasing.pdf">Lease Info</a></li></ul>

I assume this is for a 2006. It's late in the year and the 2007 models are arriving. The lease rates on 06 models are not attractive at this point. I just got the rates from the dealer for my 2007 Sedan. I wanted 10,000 miles and $0. The price of the car is $56,116 and the lease with Audi comes out to $850. 60% residual 0.00295 MF. The dealer said that Audi Financial sucks at the moment, so they quoted me an US Bank lease. US Bank doesn't do 10,000 miles, but their residual for 12,000 miles is 59% and 0.00245 MF, which results in $817 per month. Needless to say, I'm gonna go with US Bank. More miles less money.

889 for a fully loaded 2006, including New York tax, with no money down. Capitalized cost of my car was $54k with a lease rate factor of .00205

For the RS4 it varies based on lease term. I assume the S4 is similar.<ul><li><a href="http://webpages.charter.net/parkhill/RS4/Financial/AFSLeaseRates.jpg">RS4 Lease</a></li></ul>

besides, your cap cost includes TT&amp;L...he's saying the car alone is $54k, so TT&amp;L would be additional. That alone would bump the payment up almost $100/mo.

and why am I paying less to finance my car than others are to rent theirs.....err, I mean lease? I am at $820 a month for 48 months.

I know his didn't include TT&amp;L, which is part of the reason why I said it's really high.

5.75% equates to a 0.002396 MF. If the money factor's higher than that they will pay more interest than you. A lease is technically just a loan, but instead of paying down the whole principal over the term, one only pays down the depreciation. Stop calling it rent. Why? Because even if you finance, you don't own your car until you paid it off. Your bank has a lien on your title. Tell me, where's your car's title? I said it before and I say it again. If one intends to keep a car for 2-4 years, building equity in a depreciating asset is pointless. That's locking in money that doesn't give any return. If one keeps the car for longer than the loan term that's a different story. The equity in that car gives indirect return by not having to make a monthly car payment. If I remember correctly you stated somewhere that you are keeping your car for a long time, so you did the right thing by financing it.

1st of all, great information. How did you get the details on min. MF, how much the dealer can add, etc. I can rarely get that info from my sales people.

2nd, I think your 48 mos numbers are off. Your payment at a higher MF is lower (keeping all else equal).

I did not download the Excel spreadsheet to check, but sales tax calculation varies from state to state. Some pay sales tax on the entire Cap Cost some on the payment. You may want to say what you assumed.

Again, good job, and thank you.

I am keeping it long term.

I remember you saying the same thing months back, which I don't disagree with. I just do not see any point in leasing if the payments are more than financing. I did put money down, but not a substantial amount (think just enough to cover taxes, gas guzzler tax, destination, etc.).

You will freely state your monthly payment, but you are keeping your down payment a secret?

for 36 months, 15K Miles.....but my cap cost reduction was around $19K as I traded my '99 D2 for the '04D3 since I wanted 3 years/50KMiles of Free MA/Warranty and no further expense on the '99 to the order of a new tranny ($5K), timing belt service($2K), brakes ($.5K), rear seals ($1K), probably other electrical repairs($2K), at least 2 more service interval payments ($1K), etc.

I agree with you that if financing is significantly cheaper than a lease, you shouldn't lease. Keep in mind that with a lease you get gap insurance and flexibility at the end of the term, so that's worth something. For example we finance my wife's VW because I got 0% financing. No lease in the world is gonna beat that. But back to the point I'm trying to make. You are using the monthly payment to determine whether one is more expensive than the other. That's a flawed comparison. What you should compare is the total cost of the lease vs. total cost of the loan in both cases keep the car for the same length of time. Unfortunately, you can only do this comparison accurately in hindsight, because you need to know for how much you sell the car at the end. So, let's say you keep a car for 36 months. You get a lease. Everything is straight forward. You know the monthly payment and at the end of 36 months you turn in the car. If you finance it gets a little bit more complicated. You keep paying principal + interest for 36 months and lets say you have a 60 months loan. In all likelihood you'll owe more to the bank at the end of 36 months than the car's worth. So you have to sell the car for however much somebody is willing to pay at that time and then pay off the bank. Now take your down-payment + all the payments + loan payoff amount - amount you sold the car for and see how much it really costs. Lease residuals are generally higher than what you might get in the resale market. They are definitely higher than a trade-in. Everybody is always saying that Audi resale sucks, but last time I checked, an M3 had a 59% residual after 36 months. My S4 is gonna have the same 59% residual. These numbers obviously fluctuate, but Audi residuals and BMW residuals seem to be about the same, but it sounds like you get less for a used Audi than for a BMW if you are trying to sell it or trade it in.

However the intangable is that if you ever plan on keeping the car, then leasing is NOT smart. You pay gap insurance for the length of the lease term, and if you decide on buying out the lease at anytime during the lease period or at the end of the lease period, you are spreading out the lease over say three years, and then financing the car for an additional 3, 4 or 5 years at the end of the lease, and perhaps buying out the lease at a cost over the residual.

Q1) I found the numeric details on the MY2007 RS4 Lease Program sheet from AFS. It is linked to at the end of my write-up. I can not say who gave me the sheet.

Q2) All of my payment numbers were off! I mixed up the headings on the two payment charts when copying from Excel. A corrected write-up has been uploaded.

Q3) I calculated sales tax on the amount depreciated not the entire cap cost. As far as I knew, that is the way every state does it. If some use the entire cap cost, then those people are getting screwed since one of the big advantages of a lease is that you are only paying the taxes on the portion of the depreciation you use.

Thank you for your kind words.