Resolved to buy a 355 - Financing Advice?

Hah! Consider yourself lucky u r not in CA when paying the initial registration fees. Our tax is 8.25% on any major purchase (SoCal area), including auto sales between private parties. The DMV is authorized by the Francise Tax Board (aka State Pirate Board) to collect auto transaction fees. Imagine buying a $70K car and then paying an additional $5775 tax in order to register it - the registration itself is another $500 or so. Many ppl understate the selling price of the car - at their risk - to reduce their tax. Getting caught means paying what the Pirates tell you the car should have sold for and a penalty.

The only way I know to get around the tax in CA. Buy the car out of state, register it there (and pay a lesser or no sales tax), keep it there for 91 days, then bring it into CA and register it here. 91 days ownership is the magic number; at that point it is considered your property, so registration does not require the tax payment. You will need to have a "residence" in another state and have title to the car in that state.

This is our CA experience. Hopefully TX is different.

 

Here is a lease spreadsheet. I just made some generic quotes, so you can see where things fall. Every car will have a different residual and that is something you can negotiate really hard. For most 355's they will fall in the 30K to 45K residual. That depends a lot on the model and condition. A 95 355B will be a lot lower than a 98 spider. If you will PM me with what you’re looking at, I can probably tell you where you should be for a residual. As for the down payment, obviously the more you put down the lower the payment will be. Also with Premier, the interest rate also known as the money factor will work out to 9% or so. I also have a space for that in the spreadsheet so you can change it around. If you get a quote that is way under or over, than you can figure out what that percentage comes to. This is all assuming you have good credit. Who knows what you will pay, or who will lease you a car if you have bad credit.

For those of you who read this and don't know, the two parts to a lease payment are:
1. The interest only payment on the residual
2. The financed payment on the difference between the starting point and the residual. I have them separated on the spreadsheet so you can see.

Also there is sales tax on the total payment, which is added into the total in the far right.

All the fields are dynamic so you can change the rate, payment, tax, etc. as needed.
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I have a similar model I use to guage lease vrs. purchase alternatives. Where does that interest rate come from? It seems high to me. Is that what they are charging for exotic car leases? Generally, the rates are different for length of lease term, aren't they? My model is for new cars, so I can understand some differences, but the basics should be the same.

As an aside, remember when they used "money factors" as the interest rate substitute? It was the interest rate ÷ 24. For your example, it would be 0.36458333.

 

I just thought the term money factor would be confusing. By breaking it out into two things it helps to clear up where the total comes from. I use the 9% because some may be higher and some may be lower. New cars would lower, because there is less risk. Also when you are talking about leases on cars that are already 10 plus years, the unknown factor is large.