Williamffe said:
If I lease the FFE in CA, is it a good idea to do no down payment and have a little bit higher monthly payment or do I pay additional fees some how? I heard dealers may play with the number so you may get screwed with no money down.
When I was at the dealer negotiating a little over a month ago (end of Sep), I had them run the lease numbers for the range of down payments including true zero down. I then totaled for each case all the 36 payments plus the down payment and compared. There was very little difference in the total (only a few dollars) due to the interest rate being so low <0.5%, so I went with true zero down. Thats also the safest since if your car was totaled in an accident very early on, you wouldn't lose the down payment. Even if I paid all the payments in advance in one lump sum, it wouldn't have saved much of anything - I asked about that option too.
At the Ford dealer I made my deal at for my 2014 FFE, the Ford lease cash (now $10,000 but back in Sep it was $11,750) worked very well. It paid for all the usual fees (tax,license,doc,acquisition,etc) up front so I didn't have to pay even one red cent before delivery. It even paid for the first month's payment! So I only pay for the 35 remaining monthly payments that include 8% local sales tax, my first payment was this week after having the car for over a month. I setup automatic payments from my checking account at the Ford Credit website.
Interestingly, the Ford Credit website has a link "View Current Purchase Price" that produces a PDF file that shows how much I could pay to purchase the car outright with two options. Buy it this month a little under $24,000 or at the end of the lease for about $15,000 (the residual value) - there is a about an $800 savings by paying the lump sum vs the remaining 34 monthly payments and the residual value at the end of the lease. Also I'm unclear if those amounts are all I would pay or if there is any other taxes or fees involved.
If the ~$24,000 total price for purchasing the car is the whole price (no other taxes or fees) thats pretty good since its lower than the negotiated price if I had purchased the car from the dealer back in late Sep and not leased it, the price then after Ford and dealer discounts was ~$27,300 + tax&fees, probably >$30,000. I couldn't take advantage of the $7500 federal tax credit, so I went with the lease but I have already gotten the $2500 California tax rebate check qualified, just waiting for them to send it out now.
Of course now with the new lower Ford MSRP, I would think you should be able to get an even better lease deal and lower purchase price by a few thousand?