Quote:
Originally Posted by josehb
I purchased a 2010 528xi for 47,000 with 15,000 down and finance the rest at 1.9 % in Oct 2009 sold it Nov 2020 for $9,500. with 95,000 miles in excellent condition and this is one of the cars that depreciate a lot. My cost of ownership was basically the cost of changing oil and brake pads for 11 years which you need to do even if you lease and the car felt as it did when it was new. If I had lease this same car model for the 11 years my total cost would have been Just under 95,000, but my actual cost was only $52,000(inclu tax and interest) -9500 = $42,500 so I saved over $55,000 in 11 years, there is not one good enough reason to lease a car if you care about saving in the long run.
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To be fair, you wouldn't have leased anything for 10+ years. Leases are typically 3 years long. So within that time span you would have had 3 brand new cars compared to your 1 car.
Nobody is arguing that long term cost of ownership is justified through lease (and if they are, they don't know how this works). To get a true apples to apples comparison, try buying a new 5 series every 3 years and reselling it... and compare that to leasing a new one every 3 years. In MOST situations, your cost of ownership of leasing will be significantly lower (as long as BMW continues offering strong lease support), not to mention the offset of risk.
What would have happened to your resale value within that time period if you got into an accident? With a lease, your residual is set in stone, accident or not. Same goes for catastrophic maintenance issues. Just because you didn't experience that doesn't mean they don't happen.
I'm not arguing for one method or the other, but your example is unfairly comparing cost of ownership. Ultimately the lease vs. buy decision depends on many factors - personal situation/preferences, the type of car (some cars don't depreciate as quickly and even short term ownership favors purchasing rather than leasing), etc.
With the G80, it's too new to truly understand what resale value will be after 3 years. And if OP has a habit of changing cars frequently, then leasing may be the way to go, at least initially, to hedge against a potentially bad resale value if take rates for these cars is low. Only time will tell.