Hello,

I will be going to order my rS4 next weekend and will be looking to do a lease, 24 months with 15K miles, fully loaded rS4. ANybody have any advice on lease pricing, I want to put no money down other than 1 or 2 lease payments up front and 1 or 2 security deposits. Also, does anybody know what the real lead time is on the rS4, different dealers are saying differnt things I'm hearing 10 weeks from one dealer and 12 - 16 weeks from another.

I am also undecided on the color partially becasue it is very hard to find good pics of an RS4, i have narrowed it down to mugello blue with silver interior, sprint blue probably with black interior or daytona grey with black interior.. if anyone has any good pics of rS4s in these colors, I would greatly appreciate it or if you have any advice on what colors you think look good that would help to.

Thanks in advance,

Cyc.

 

no matter what you do, don't pay a dime over MSRP. in fact, you should be able to get it BELOW MSRP now. they will have more RS4's in calendar year 2007 than there are buyers for these cars. there is still plenty of allocation left for the USA in 2007. any dealer who tells you otherwise is full of BS.

lead time depends upon which "batch" the car will be built on. until the order is placed, they really won't know exactly how long it will take until it's assigned to a "batch". so until then, the dealers will all be guessing.

for colors, check here: http://www.penneck.com/rs4gallery/

and pick your dealer carefully. check on this and other audi forums how they are and which salesman to go to. and make sure their service department is reliable. big huge differences in quality from one dealer to another!! good luck!!

 

Wow, Thank you very much for that link Tsunami Rcr, those are some of the best pics I've seen, if you have any other sites that have pictures would greatly appreciate it, it would be great to have any pics of a couple of the colors side by side.. I am definitely leaning towards mugello blue or daytona grey though at this point... Yeah I will definitely not pay over MSRP but is it realistic to get under MSRP? What about negotiating service? I was thinking I might have better luck negotiating free service for the terms of the lease which is only 24 months.. THis is my first lease so I also have to figure out what my lease payment should be...

As far as dealerships are concerned I am in Northern Virginia near washington dc, anybody know anything about the dealerships in this area?

From what I"ve seen so far, Sprint Blue looks the best at night but I'm not sure I'm crazy about it during the day, I think Daytona Grey, Mugello Blue, and Phantom Black on a bright sunny day look really good.. any other advice about colors from your experiences would be great, we have a lot of S4s in the dc area but I have yet to really see an rS4.

Thanks,

Cyc.

 

buy and it will be yours, lease and its theirs ( would I lease a car ) absolutely not

 

Believe me I never thought I would lease a car either, but I am leasing because I am self employed and work out of a home office. As such, I can tax deduct the bulk of the lease payment. Besides given how quickly i tire of cars, a lease is ideal for me, I will probably want something different in two years, maybe a newer rS4 if they redesign it.

S.

 

here's the other thing to remember about a lease on a RS4: be prepared to sell it and pay off the bank the buyout and pocket the difference. audi financial services residualizes the RS4 for 36 months with 36K miles at 58% of the original purchase price. it will be worth more than that. it sounds like a crappy lease but once you factor in the estimated difference you'll pocket at the end, the lease works out. the higher anticipated residual value isn't concrete but it's a calculated risk.

either way, going in, you know what the buyout residual value on the car is at the end of your lease and depending upon the actual value, you can choose to pocket the difference (if worth more, which is very likely) or just return the car and walk away (if worse less, though highly unlikely).

lease is ideal if you're writing off for business, don't don't drive more than 12-15K miles a year, and the type of person who would get another car anyways after you're done paying off a car through traditional financing. if you're the type that keeps cars for more than 6 years, drive high miles, or have no idea what you're doing, leasing is not the right way to do it. i have seen many people get screwed in leasing but 100% of those times, it was their own fault for not researching and doing the math themselves before they stepped foot in the showroom. shop around too; lease deals differ greatly by dealer, money factor and the bank's set residual.

 

Thanks for the advice tsunami, i definitely will not go over 15K miles, i currently own a 2005 g35 coupe and have only put 12K miles on it 1 year, plus I am aslo thinkign about buying a second "beater" car to drive around when there's salt all over the roads this winter...

so anyway i got a quote from one dealership, the quote is:



Total MSRP: 73,520

24 months/15k miles - $1650.00

36 months/15k miles - $1400.00

I need to get more details, I assume this is with no money down and includes taxes but need to find out.. still seems a bit high to me.. what else do i need to ask? residual?
Also, i saw something about getting "inlays" as an option on the car, which is some sort of accents for the interior, is this only available on the european model?

Thanks,

Cyc.

 

hard to say if that's a good lease without some info.

the exact information you'll need is the final "transaction price" which includes 1) purchase price of car which in your case appears to be sticker 2) registration fees etc. 3) any other fees, like aquisition fee if any. then you'll need the "residual value" the bank is setting on the car based on the total number of months and miles you plan to put on the car. subtract "transaction price" from "residual value" and that's your "lease" before sales tax.

then ask what the "money factor" is on the lease, which can also be translated to an APR % which might make more sense to most people. you can go to lease calculators at sites like bankrate.com and plug in all this information to get an approximate monthly lease payment. this will also allow you to play around with the "cap reduction" which is the cash out of your pocket upfront to reduce your monthly payment to the desired level you want. "cap reduciton" is cash IN ADDITION to your "drive-off" fees, which are fixed and usually consist of your first month's payment, aquisistion fee (if any), taxes and security deposit.

with all this info, you can plug it into the online lease calculator and have a pretty good idea how much you will need "down" and what your "monthly" will be. dealers don't expect you to have all this information and this is where the average joe gets taken because they're focused soley on the "how much does it cost me a month, and how much do i have to write a check for upfront?". if you have all the numbers yourself, you can walk in there with the actual lease calculator printout and walk out with a lease contract pretty darn close to it.

 

So I went to one dealership today and the experience was not pleasant, teh sales guy was cool and he even informally said I'd be looking at around 1350-1400.00 per month with no money down for a lease of 15,000 miles for 24 months.. then I go in to talk to the finance guy and he gives me these numbers

Money factor .0042 - isnt that like a 10% interest rate?????
Residual - 62%
24 months - 15,000 miles lease payment is - 1800.00 per month , a little more than that actually

if i did 36 months it would be 1536.00 or something like that, he refused to print anything out saying that this was only good for today's rates.

to me the residual seems pretty low, i cant imagine the car would lose that much value in just two years with 30K miles, i guess that is why Tsunami said you can make money off these cars if they dont value the car appropriately... also the finance manager said that the lease payment would fluctuate every month.. that seems like total BS, he said becasue of the interest rates.. sounds like he was trying to sucker me into some sort of lease where the interest rate floats every month.. anyway i ended up walking out of there, the sales guy told me he woudl talk to the finance guy to try and get the monthly payment lower, but I'm not optimistic, that dealership is really small too and I woudlnt have any confidence getting the car serviced there.

Now mind you another dealership has quoted me 1600.00 a month via email for the same figures...I am currently talking to another more reputable dealer in the area that actually has a fully loaded daytona grey/silver interior on the lot, they also said that i could not lock in the interest rate right now but maybe I could negotiate locking that in a month before the car arrives..

Would love to get some thoughts from you guys as this is my first lease.

Thanks,

Cyc.

 

The lease money factor you were quoted sounds like a rip off from the dealer. I assume that was from Audi Financing? I know that BMW's base money factor is .00319, but the dealer would want to add more to get more profit. I was quoted .00419 at a BMW dealer, for instance. It was easy to find this info on the BMW board, but I don't know if anyone on this forum knows the base money factor for Audi. Usually the money factor is the same for the entire model line, unless they lower it to push some models.

The residual for 2 year seems a bit low. BMW financing offers 68% for 24 months - 15,000 miles/year on a M5. Anyway, you could shop around with different banks/credit unions, and leasecompare.com could give you some options as well.