if your lease buyout it less money than the car is worth on the market, you make money.

 

If you are going to lease, then stick with the lease, for the rest of time until you stop purchasing cars every couple of years. If you are fickle about car choice and get tired of cars easily, then this is the choice for you. In this case, a descent choice for one that may have greater propensity for buyer's remorse.
Leasing can be a pain in the butt...if you plan on owning the vehicle. You never know what the dealership will say when you turn the car in and purchase. Especially with people that may be a bit of a stickler of being the one owner of the vehicle, switching from lease to eventual purchase tends to switch the vehicle from a one owner to a two owner vehicle (even though one owner has really had posession of the vehicle).
When the finances are there to purchase, the purchase is easy, and terms can be much more negotiable. When the finances do not match up with the purchase, the options for negotiation tend to reduce. Leasing provides the option for others to own cars with less finances placed on the table.
Leasing tends to be easier, especially with leasing to ones own business. Use the car for business, dump the car, and pick up something else, and all is charged to the business and business expense. Then again, for ones that have their own business.
For a large number of people on the forum, purchasing makes things easy because you can do what you want; with leasing, you can technically make changes to the car, but if it does not look "stock" in the end, and if the dealer is a stickler for pure "stock", your charges for retention of "stock" can be more than desired. A large number of people would rather not have to deal with a conversion to "stock" with a number of mods that have been made to their vehicle.

 

Don't lease.

These cars retain their value pretty well over time. I would buy an 08 Evo X (low mileage) and hold on to it until the next Evo comes out. The cars taken some of the major depreciation already.

I've owned three Evos, no regrets... I bought my Evo VIII for $28k brand new and sold it 3 years later for 22k (but I dumped like $6k in mods into it). I purchased a lightly modded Evo IX and sold it for about the same price I bought it for 1.5 years later.

Pentagon Federal Credit Union and Eastern Financial/Space Coast Credit union have rates of 3.99% to own. I'm not sure what you have locally for loan rates, but if you are looking to lease you should be able to qualify for these type of rates.

Think $25k at 5 years/4% is $460 per month. Anyway, good luck on the purchase whatever your decision.

 

Evo's have an outstanding resale value though. Look at the price for 08s now, its almost MSRP

I say look at the terms of the lease, how many years and how much to buy the car at the end. Example, if the price to buy at the end of a 3 year lease is less than what 3 year old Evos are going for now, then go for it.

 

buy it buy it buy it!!! NEVER LEASE an EVO!!!

 

Don't lease you will not wanna give it back and when you do you will miss it.

 

i leased mine, but never planned on giving it back in the first place. The lease got me a lower monthly payment, and helped with the negative equity I had from trading in my '09 Ralliart. At the end of the 4 year lease I will just pay it off.

 

when u traded in your ralliart for the evo did ur payment go up leasing or down?

 

there's a difference between "residual" and "resale value". you cannot argue with the bank that after 3 years the evo will retain its value better than they think, etc. they project a value and the lease is based on that value. for the most part that number is non-negotiable. thus if you lease its more likely that in the end, the car is worth more than they give it credit for, and thus you pay for more depreciation.

this all changes if you buy the car at lease end of course, but if you simply give it back, they under valued the car from the get go and you still pay for the depreciation that didnt happen.