Hey Tashi new mothers really like mini vans, the getting babies in/out, moving a car seat in/out is SO much easier thru that big sliding door which opens on remote control in a mini van, they can walk thru to grab or feed a fussing baby, the mini van can carry lotsa shit, is pretty comfy and stable to drive
and once they are done with babies they want an SUV to distance themsleves from the minivan thing
i have a company lease vehicle. of the last 2 i have turned in not one did I think i could make any money buying out the residual and flipping it.
as in the real depreciation was equal to or more than than lease buy out.
prior to that I had leased truck i bought out. and sold 3 years later with 200k on it. the cost of ownership of the truck including repairs and depreciation came out to within 400 per year of the lease. that truck never had a major mechanical issue like a tranny or motor. so for an extra 30 bux a month I could have been driving a new truck. if it had more mech issues it would have been cheaper to lease an new one.
New vs Used car math of today is not quite the same as it was 20 years ago.
I had a little book written by the pres of the autoleasing association of canada in which she gave the formula for figuring out which is cheaper … lease or buy
Basicly in times of very high interest rates of over 15% on a very short term lease as in [HTML_REMOVED] 2yrs which would mean very high lease payments leasing was cheaper than a car loan but of course we havent seen that in a good long time and money has been SO cheap to borrow for quite awhile