I can't help but wonder why everytime I look in the newspaper or read about f150's on why the f150's are the cheepest pretty much of any car Ford Makes? I mean here you can lease an f150 for 179 bucks a month, but yet a Taurus cost more to lease somehow? Even a little Focus cost about just as much as the f150 when it comes time to lease them? Why the heck is a big truck like the f150 which obiously cost a lot more then any Taurus or Focus cheaper to lease then an f150??
It doesn't make sence to me, I'm payign a little over 500 bucks a month for the next 6 years just don't understand why a big expensive truck cost so low to lease?

 

they are probably the base models made for company fleet leases. i know the cheapest f150 regular cab is many times cheaper than my lariat supercrew 4x4.

 

The bottom line to any lease is what it's worth at the end of the lease. Vehicles that hold their value better are cheaper to lease. I could have leased a full blown 50k 250 Diesel for 100 bucks more a month than my 37k 150. They are weird about leasing 250/350 in some areas. They weren't offering leases on 250's in July when I bought. Two months later they were..

 

With a lease, they make up for it when the lease is over, theres a $250 fee just to end the lease! If you've gone over the milage limit, boom, they nail you for something like $0.10/mile. They will charge you for windshield chips, scratches, ect., ect. And if you decide to keep it, you gotta come up with a huge balloon payment or refinance the remaining balance, more money out of your pocket! I leased my first F150, it was a plain jane 2000 XL. The insurance was almost the same as the payment. I took good care of it and kept the miles down, so it didn't go too bad, but I wouldn't do it again.

 

You said it with all those extra fees and damage charges. Most people don't think about that or are unaware when leasing. I'm sure there are situations when leasing is a good thing, but I can't think of any right now! Who wants to pay for a vehicle twice if you decide to keep it?

 

The 250 is only if you end the lease early. It's .020 per mile if you are over. They don't nail you for every ding and scratch. There's a normal wear and tear factor...

Leases are not for everyone. It works for me because 90% of my biz expense is traveling to the boats to survey them. I'll write off 90% of the lease cost. My insurance is a 100 bucks more a year on the 04 than it was on the 88 Bronco..

If you are even thinking about keeping the truck only an idiot would start out with a lease. Same thing for buying lease without enough mileage in it to cover your traveling for 3 years. I've got 4500 on a 7 month old truck that should have 8400 on it figuring 1200 miles a month. Of course I'll catch up on that some in my busy season in the spring, but I figure mine will have about 28-30k on it when the 36/36000 lease is up. I'll sell the truck outright myself. At least end my truck will be worth 20,089 according to Ford. Shouldn't be hard to get more for it than that in 2 1/2 years..

 

For me, Ford's Red Carpet lease was what I needed at the right time. Since I'm still making Harley payments along with plenty of other bills, a new vehicle payment wasn't in the cards for me. I had planned on later this year of looking into a new vehicle after taking care of some bills first, but as luck (or lack of it) I had vehicle problems that forced me into an earlier decision. Since my work is just a 7 mile drive, and I don't do a ton of traveling, the mileage limit wasn't a concern for me. I have historically been a GM guy, but the new F-150 really peaked my interest. After test driving one, I was sold. The sticker on the truck was about 30K. It was for a "05" STX F-150 SCab, 6.5 box, 4X4. Nothing fancy, but still a very nice truck. I came up with $1200 for a down payment, and the monthly payments worked out to $275. There is no fee at the end to get out of the lease. If I want to keep the truck after the 2 years, I can refinance for $19,000, or just turn in the keys. If I was looking for a used truck like this that was only a couple years old with low miles, $19,000 would not be a bad price. I'll probably just say give me another new one. Always under warranty and always new. Not a bad way to go if the circumstances fit your situation. Ford has to like these leases, puts new vehicles on the road, and they get back low mileage vehicles a couple years old that sell very well. Seems like a win win situation for them. Oh, and if I didn't already say it, I love this truck, Go Ford.......

 

I was under the impression, if you use your truck or SUV for a business then there is a write off other than depreciation even if you own it. It's not just confined to leasing. This was introduced a few years back for small business owners.

The wear and tear is at the discretion of the dealer, so why chance it.

Do the math, take into account your lease payments of the entire lease along with your $$$ to contract the lease and the entire out of pocket to payoff the $19K if you purchase. It far exceeds out of pocket if you were just to purchase the vehicle. Especially when you can get some real cheap finance terms for purchasing! In some cases 0% finance charges!
No wonder the dealers love leasing!

 

I'm glad someone brought that up. You get the writeoff if you buy it, the lease co gets it if it's leased.

BTW- Wear and tear is determined by the lease company, not the dealer. The dealer's just the keeper of the keys when it gets turned back in.

 

Historically it's easier to write off leases than to write off purchases. Though the IRS and it's rewrites to the social engineering code have changed that.

There was something this year to large SUV's and a closed loophole, mentioned on here but I'm too lazy to look.

 

Not on trucks, although that is true on cars. You can write off the lease payments, but compare that to writing off the whole truck. The SUV loophole was closed, in that you can't write off $75K the first year(!), but taxwise, they're still treated favorably compared to a passenger car. The difference is still huge.

 

I've always understood you can write off either the lease payment or the mileage.. I used to write off the mileage on the Bronco.. I haven't gotten with my tax guy yet, but he wanted all the info..


I know you have to becareful about how much you write off if the vehicle is used for personal use.

 

IMO...... Leases are for the dealers!
End of lease you have squat and the dealer has a gurenteened customer

I have tried the lease and have never seen where it saved me one red cent.

 

Not true. I had the Ford red carpet lease and it says right on the back (fine print) there is a $250 fee at the END of the lease. I forgot the term they use, but its supposed to be to cover the cost of paperwork or something. This was in 2003, it may have changed since. I didn't end up paying it anyway because I complained about how long it was taking (new salesguy had never handled a lease return), but they can.

Windshield chip the size of a quarter or less = $50 each, if there are more than 3, you get charged for a new windshield. I had a small hole in the dash from an alarm LED I took out and forgot to cover up the hole, $30 charge.

Leases are ok for some people but not everone.

 

This is probably repetitive, but the lease is low simply because the truck holds its value well. The lease payments represent the truck's depreciation over the lease years, so something that loses less relative value will cost less to lease. Trucks have historically had a higher value after x years than an average car, and hence are cheaper to lease.

I leased a '99 F150 for 5 years, and my brother bought it at lease end for the payoff amount. (It was really low mileage and a shame to "give back.") The lease payments were a lot less than new car payments, and that's all I could afford at the time.