Lamin

I have a 3.5 year old Dodge Grand Caravan and at 117,000 the transmission has just gone----shocking. After another steering rack fault that was luckily covered by warranty I am thinking of just getting rid of it and cutting my losses before there is another major issue, I originally just wanted to keep it for as long as, as I am no vehicle enthusiast.

My other school of thought is sell it now and just lease the cheapest thing going, lazily this is a knee jerk reactions as I've done no research.

What can I expect to drive and pay if I go for a lease option? I am talking the cheapest going, nothing fancy.

Pros and cons or any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Fed up motorist !!!!

Danny B

Get a Japanese or South Korean (Hyundai or Kia) vehicle if you want reliability. The only exception to this is to stay away from Nissan vehicles with a CVT transmission.

Atlantic Xpat

All of the auto manufacturers websites have lease / loan calculators. Make sure you tick the "include taxes and delivery fees" boxes to get full up costs.
My experience is that actual lease costs are generally higher than those on the websites but it'll give you a good idea. Be aware of how many Kms you are leasing over - 20k per annum is the norm. If you are a high mileage driver then you risk being dinged with extra km fees at the end of your lease. If you've done 117k over 3.5 years then this may be a problem. You can get 24k p/a leases for more per month.
We lease two Korean vehicles presently - 2019 Kia Soul & 2020 Hyundai Palisade. The Soul was the outgoing model so pretty cheap at $350/month over 48 months. The Palisade is a bigger/more expensive vehicle but I got a good deal on a 3 year lease.
I'm a fan of leasing as used cars seem disproportionately expensive here & as such you are paying a high monthly payment or extending your loan term out to the time the vehicle is likely to be costing more and/or falling to bits. 36-48 month lease allows us to drive newish vehicles under warranty and for me this is preferably to extended financing terms on buying a new vehicle over 5-7 years. YMMV of course.

dbd33

I've had lots of success with leases but, after the Mustang's dramatic demise, was convinced to go with something cheap for commuting. Leases are not cheap for high mileage commuter cars. I guess it was last July or so that I bought a 2015 Ford C-max hybrid with 39,000km on it. It was a bit under $20,000 all in. It has about 75,000 clicks on it now and costs nothing but minimal servicing. A display says it uses 5.4 l/100k in the summer and 5.5 in the winter while being driven vigorously. I hate myself for being in it, I don't care if it crashes and burns, but I have to concede that the operating costs are negligible, the seat heaters are efficient and the leather is almost as good as that in the good cars.

If cheap is what you want, a discontinued vehicle that no one loved in the first place is the way to go.

hg42

It's hard to give definite advice without knowing what your budget is.

Leasing in general - specifics, obviously, will vary wildly depending on who needs to make their bonus at the end of the month - is relatively more of a 'thing' on 'premium' or otherwise desirable cars as (rationally or otherwise) they tend to retain more of a proportion of their value at the end of the lease period than cars that are more of the econoboxy type. So f.e leasing a (by Canadian standards) microcar like a Hyundai Accent for three years will probably cost you in the region of $300 per month, because although you can probably get a dealer to pinch one out for about $14k new Hyundai think it'll be worth...not much, after three years.

If you were to lease, say, a Toyota 4runner with many of the sorts of bells, whistles etc that attract Lifestyle People you'd probably pay about $800 per month even though it'd cost you north of $50k to walk out of a showroom with a new one, because a three year old one will still sell for $35k or so. I mean, the lease is still a ripoff, but you can see how the underlying financials work.

It's essentially never the optimal choice purely from a cost point of view (you'll always be paying for a vehicle's depreciation at the highest rate it'll ever be running at) but if you're the sort of person who is going to be replacing cars after 2-3 years anyway it can make sense as you wouldn't be worse off vs owning and limit your potential liability, and obviously the upside is convenience and not having to think too hard about anything but the number at the end of the month. Hard to quantify the value of that, it depends on you, but it's not nothing or a meaningless consideration.

Broadly I would say that the 'sweet spots' for car buying, are:

a) new (if you're certain you'll keep whatever for a long time AND have the inclination to actually maintain it properly (which these days may involve going beyond what the manuf suggests - 20,000km oil changes are unlikely to be wise, witness f.e the trend in the last few years of those notionally oh-so-reliable Hyundais, Kias etc grenading engines after a couple of years because people actually follow their terminally brain-poisoned service intervals))
b) 4-6 years old (greater part of the depreciation hit, plenty of life left)
c) 15+ years old (if it was fundamentally crap odds are it'd have been scrapped by now, you'll pay in repairs but save on cost up front)

Since you already have a (paid for?) b) you probably want to think hard about the actual costs involved in everything - not forgetting that your time isn't free, of course!

As far as what to get it obviously depends on your needs. Caravans are a bit crap (and notoriously intolerant of less than stellar maintenance particularly wrt transmissions) but they're also cheap as hell and every mechanic in the country knows what to do with them. It's highly likely your local scrappy has a few sitting around and it's entirely possible that putting a new transmission in is the financially sensible choice, notwithstanding that it may not be the emotionally satisfying choice.



This is also v. true. I bought a 2012 Impala a few months ago - one of the least interesting cars put out since Henry Ford started to get his wild notions, but at under $5000 for a 7 year old car with 120,000km...

Engineer_abroad

you have done 117,000 Km in 3.5 years? If so I doubt leasing is the best option for you due to the restrictions on annual mileage.

cheeky_monkey

i have just purchased for cash a 2018 Kia Optima..got rid of my 2017 Rogue which as on finance..no more monthly payments and interest

Danny B

I drive a VW Golf TDI, one of the many VW diesels that were 'fixed' during the emissions scandal. The extended diesel gate warranty is incredible, expires on 2023 when the car is 10 years old.

To the original poster, this is a great site to calculate the best time to purchase a used car.
https://usedfirst.com/