Just as the other thread with east coast dealers, looking for a west coast version. I tend to finance my MB and keep them for at least 8+ years; haven't had any issues(knock on wood!)
Specifically, I'm in southern california. And more specifically, I am in LA/Orange county. I have seen the markups from Fletcher Jones and surrounding areas going all the way to Walter's in Riverside. Was looking for recommendations.
TYIA!

 

SD too? El Cajon, San Diego, Carlsbad, Escondido.

 

Use the online inventory locator on MBUSA website to find all available cars within 50-100 miles of your zip (or whatever distance you're comfortable with) and start contacting all the dealers through their sites. With over fifty 2024 GLS450s available as of now in SoCal and many more in transit, it shouldn't be difficult to find a dealer that is willing to work with you.
Who did you talk with at Fletcher Jones? I was happy working with Bill Hardy over there but full disclosure I also returned an end-of-lease gls with large upside on equity to them.

 

I got my Maybach from SLO last week for 2000 under MSRP. It was the last day of the month, and they wanted to make a deal.
I had negotiated an MSRP deal for the same car at Wilsonville Oregon without any effort. Both dealerships were asking 25,000 over.

 

Funny you mentioned SLO. Of course the experience will depend on who you work with, but these guys have the audacity to list GLSs on their website for 10-15K above MSRP. A few months ago during my search, they eventually agreed to "lower" their price to MSRP for me but then when I looked at their lease payments carefully, I noticed they had marked up the MF from base of 0.00275 (which I qualified for) to 0.00425 (that's a jump in interest rate from 6.6% MBFS offers to 10.2% for a tier-1 client). Again, I don't want to generalize my experience to others, but based on what I saw, if someone does not know their numbers and walk into this place, they could easily end up being overcharged 20-30k in a 100k deal.

 

Luckily I walked in with my own financing, especially when there were no incentives to be had. My sales guy was honest that the interest rate from MBFS was pretty bad.

 

Yeah the current lease rates with MBFS are really bad. A buddy of mine who works in financing for BMW mentioned their store had seen an uptick in end of lease MB owners and new prospect owners since BMW lease rates were almost 2% lower than current MB rates.

 

They were but the 4.99% has just gone up to 5.29%.

 

I paid $190K cash for the Maybach. They offered me a one-pay lease 2 yr $132K with $92K residual and MF .00325%.

 

A one-pay lease is one of the biggest "scams". You do realize if your car was totaled driving away from the dealer lot, insurance will pay for the loss but you will have no car to show for your "one-pay".

0.00325 MF is equivalent to 7.8%, which is not competitive...

 

Agreed. General rule when leasing is to put down at little as possible (0) and just pay for the non residualized items (acquisition fee, title, registration, etc) and first monthly payment when picking up the car. I think single-pay lease should qualify for even lower MF, but again, that's not worth the risk in my opinion either (not to mention the lost interest you could have made over the length of the lease on the huge sum you pay upfront). A better approach is to put down multiple security deposits (MSD) which will be fully refunded back to you at the end of the lease. MBFS allows up to 10 MSDs (with each MSD equaling one monthly payment of the lease) and will drop the MF by 0.0007 for each. In my recent lease, the dealer had marked up the MF to 0.003 (pretty common and annoying nickel-and-diming practice) but I put down 10 MSDs and brought it down to 0.0023.

 

I believe most one pay leases put your money into escrow and if something happens you're returned the balance, so it really acts like a 0 down lease. But yes, putting momney down on a lease is not a good idea.