Took delivery of my 2025 E450 in October, and received a negotiated $4,000 reduction from MSRP from the dealership.

 

$4,000? A $10,000 discount is a given. You can even push for a $12,500 discount. I have consistently received $12,000 discounts in the E class for 10 years

I got a $28,000 discount off of my 2024 S580 convertible. You have to do your research and negotiate. Put dealerships against eachother on the internet and make them beat each other's prices.

If you need more advice, let me know

 

Are these clean purchases? Or Lease and/or with trade in?

 

I heard you can get your deposit back if you change your mind. Double check with the dealer

 

I think you're referring to the S Class discounts, which have lots of "trunk" money from MBUSA. No way would you receive $12,000 discounts for a 2025 E450 purchased at the beginning of the 2025 E Class offerings.

 

How did you get MB to produce you 2024 S580 convertible and then give you a discount on that?

 

Great Question!!!!

 

I got about 23K off my E53

 

Where can I find one of those 2024 S580 convertibles??

 

They were on lease and purchases but it doesn't matter. Your payment is based off of the purchase price whether you are leasing or buying

 

Unless the car is purchased for cash without financing, including leasing, or any other complicating factor, there is no way of knowing what if any discount was provided.

This is simply true because the seller has more information than the buyer on all factors involved.

 

Ha Ha!

 

There is no 2024 s580 convertible. Only The four doors available.

The only convertibles offered by Mercedes are the CLE convertible and the SL convertible.

 

Well I guess your cousin is not the manager of the Mercedes dealership where I have bought my last eight Mercedes cars for myself, five for my family and four for friends. I 100% got the $12, 500 discount on the cle-53 convertible which had a sticker of approximately $95,000.I could have got an automatic $10,000 discount on any CLE coupe on the lot, which was the same discount back when the two door CLE was the E class coupe. The S580 i bought before this was 140k and I got over 28,000 off the price of the car. Both were leased.

Whether you're buying or leasing, the price of the car is a factor in the monthly payment. When you're buying the car, it's also based on the interest rate of the loan. When you're leasing the car, you look to the money factor which is the equivalent of the interest rate when you lease. That's how payments are determined whether you lease or purchase.

I prefer to have a new car every few years instead of a expensive car with thousands of dollars in repairs out of warranty. That is why I lease. You simply have more options when you lease plus you put down a lower down payment and your monthly payment is lower. If your car gets in a horrific accident and has to be repaired, the dealer has t
accept this back from you when it's a lease. My cars have low miles so I have sold my lease vehicles many times and came out ahead with equity. At the end of the lease, you can also choose to buy the car or give it back. You use the car for the best part of its life under full warranty from the manufacturer. I can also write off the payments against my business expenses when I lease. With the S580, I was able to write off much more, because the car weighed over 6,000 lb. Please refer to your local IRS rules to understand why this makes a difference.

When you buy a car, the average loan term is now approximately 72 months these days which is absurd. By the time you're finished paying for the purchased car, your warranty Is over and the car is worth 1/3 of the price if even that. Also, if your car was in a big accident, every dealer will jerk you around when you try to sell the car and will tell you your car was in an accident and tried to give you pennies for your car. You also have to deal with costly repairs on a German car which could cost thousands of dollars. Leasing beats buying a car any day.

 

Furthermore, you have to remember that the CLE came out in 2023 as a 2024 model. That is when all the suckers by the first generation of the car, which can be subject to many flaws, recalls and issues, and the car can be sold for over sticker. Once your into the second or third year version of the car, you can get a video on the car as I have been doing for many many years now.

My cousin, the main manager of the dealership, let my friend in when they first got the 2025 models. He gave my friend an automatic $10,000 discount on any CLE 450 or CLE 53 coupe give me an automatic 12,500 discount on any cle450 or any CLE53 convertible. Plus we got 12,000 miles per year. I have also helped other friends negotiate with other dealerships and get similar deals. If you're not getting deals like this, you most likely don't know what you're doing and you don't know how to negotiae, whether it is a purchased or leased vehicle. Don't hold other people back with your beliefs or lack of what kind of deals you can truly get on a vehicle.

 

There are a couple of things that I would do differently in a lease:

• Never every put anything down on a lease. At lease signing all you want to pay is the first months payment and motor vehicle fees. Any sales tax should also be put into the lease. The reason for this is quite simple: In the event of an accident and your car is totaled, as you posted, or it is stolen, your insurance which includes GAP, will pay off the balance of your lease payments. If you put money down or paid taxes upfront, that money is lost: puff into the ether - never to be seen again. This is leasing 101. To illustrate, with no money down and taxes rolled into the lease, the lease payment for example is $1200 a month 36 months, $43,200. You put down $10,000 and paid taxes upfront of $5,000 reducing your payments to $800, 36 months, total $28,800. After 6 months your car is totaled or stolen. Your insurance company pays off the lease. You lose your down payment and taxes, $15,000. Again never put anything down on a lease and all fees and taxes should be wrapped into the lease.
• I have been leasing for over 40 years and over 30 cars. Until Covid it was rare at the end of lease for there to be any equity in the car. At the end of the lease you were upside down: The buyback, nearly 100% of the time, was higher than the value of the car. This is to be expected: In order to move cars, manufacturers to keep the lease price as low as possible, by giving an an artificially high residual. Accordingly, very few people bought their cars at the end of the lease.
• Supported leases, leases that have high residuals seem to be going away, at least with Mercedes. When I looked at leasing a 2025 E450 the residual was only 52%. (the residual on my 2019 E450 was 60%) That means one of two things: 1) the residual/buy back price will be lower than the value of the car, which effectively turns a lease into a finance purchase of the car, not the purpose of a lease. Or 2) the Mercedes will actually after three years be worth only 50% - which means it is extremely expensive.

I agree with you that whether you buy, finance or buy outright the selling price is the same, with one caveat: when you lease or finance the dealer makes an additional profit and so the price for financing or leasing may actually be lower than an outright purchase.

The money factor is the same as interest. To convert the money factor into interest multiply by 2400.

For business leasing has another benefit: Almost every accountant will tell you it is better to write off a lease payment, which is clean and simple rather than depreciate the car.

Hope this clarifies and helps.

 

Whether you purchase of lease, always demand paying interest or the imputed interest in a lease at the Dealer's "BUY RATE". The Dealer "Buy Rate" is the borrowing rate the dealer is offered from the loan originator and the dealer then adds 1% or more to this rate for his profit. I always demand the Buy Rate since it could represent a significant reduction in the monthly payment and savings over the course of the loan or lease.

 

As a rule, I always lease from the financial arm of the manufacturer. This is a set rate - although I have read that some dealers try to mark this rate up. Here in the NY Metro area with over 20 Mercedes dealers within a 50 mile range, a mark up to a savvy buyer is not possible.

Leasing from a third party might lower the monthly payments a bit, but at the end of the lease they often will nickel and dime you to make up the lower payment!

Most leases from the manufacturer's financial arm will waive up to $500 damage, three incidents, total of $1500, at lease end. That is not the usual case with a third party lender.

 

Down here in Florida, we don't have that many MB Dealers as in NYC. Also, the Buy Rate even on MB Financing works down here.

 

I know. My comment was tongue in cheek.
You said you got a $28,000 discount off of a S580 convertible.

 

Even with few dealers, there is the internet: Once you have configured your car you can submit, via email, to as many dealers as you want to get their best monthly lease payment.

 

If you send me the contact info for the dealership, I will gladly pay you anything I get over $10,000 off MSRP.

 

I thought I paid 80k OTD for a 2025 E450 with a 78xxx MSRP. They ended up refunding some of the tax costs so I ended up paying OTD what the MSRP was. It's a 7% discount in October 2024 for a 2025 model which is around $7k. With a E350 I would have gotten a larger discount as they had so many comparatively, but this was the market in October 2024 for 2025s.