Not necessarily - we moved over on a work transfer a couple of years ago and sorted out lease cars with international autosource. Might be worth checking them out before you move if you are still interested in looking at a lease car.

leaving aside the issue of credit history, you also need to factor in the cost of buying insurance. Depending on your age, location, and whether you can find an insurance company that will take your UK driving history into account, you may end up paying way more for insurance here than you were in the UK. For example, when I arrived in the US I was paying $1900 per year for 3rd party F&T insurance (no comprehensive/collision) because I was living in Baltimore City and was under 30. That was in 1992 (!). Its a bit of an extreme example, but you get my point.

If you lease you will be required to have comprehensive/collision insurance which may be a considerable amount per month, whereas buying a cheap used car allows you to just insure against 3rd party risks and save money.

Yes that's true, get a US license as soon as you can, when i got mine the insurance company bascially "priced" me up as a "new driver" even though i had been driving 15 years! Very expensive!

O one other thing, your $350 a month has to include tax/fees and all that other junk they will try and addon per month.. good luck.

Good point. On arrival, I also had to pay through the nose for insurance, and could not get it from 'first tier' providers. I ended up getting a crappy policy from some no-name place. But - after 6 or 8 or 12 months, I was then eligible to go with CSAA (AAA) and from then on life was good. As you said, another good incentive to go with an old used car to start with, and only insure for liability/etc.