This is my deal:

msrp $117,895
discount: $4400
They also made the last remaining 16 payments of my C450 for close to $10k
down payment: $5000 total drive off

payment is $1987 including tax ( 9.5% in the great state of CA)

im very happy with the deal and found a local dealer who worked with me instead of trying to impose the fair market line they all said.

very happy!

Long time lurker, first time poster. Awesome forum!! Thanks everyone for the wealth of info.

After waiting many months for my Magno Grey E63S with Nut Brown AMG performance seat interior, my dealer says car is arriving tomorrow. I've been trying to calculate my monthly lease and am curious what MF's California people are getting. I've been told "standard" which I thought was between 0.0022 and 0.0023 but from what I'm reading, many dealers are quoting higher than this. I plan to do the 10 MSD's to lower the rate by 0.0007 but still would love to know what the buy rate is. Also, anyone having any luck getting the dealer to discount sticker? or throw in 3 years pre-paid maintenance?

congrats on finally getting your car. The MF buy rate here in CA is 0.00230. Residual is 57% or 36 months and 10 K a year. Just what it is . Was able to negotiate $4400 off on an in stock car. If you ordered your car from a dealer you will be stuck with MSRP

Hmm. In some ways your deal is very good - the fact that they're paying $10k for 16 (!!!!) payments on your existing car is pretty amazing. OTOH, my build is $123k, with a $6k discount, and my 36 mo/10k mi/yr payment is $1800 without tax - i.e. the same as yours since yours includes tax.

Also, if that $5k drive off includes your first payment, that means you're paying over $3k in other fees (and no taxes since that's in your monthly payment). My fees are about $1800.

So your lease terms are "okay" (in the context of an E63!), but your total deal is great considering the $10k they're throwing down for your existing lease.

BTW any reason you're financing the tax as opposed to paying it up front? I'm morally opposed to paying interest on taxes!

I did 5K down to get my payments below the $2k mark that I wanted to be. Plus my liability is only $2850 of cap reduction. I NEVER put any tax and as little cap reduction up front as if the car gets stolen or totaled you are SOL. The GAP insurance does not cover it, and then your left hoping the value of the car when the loss happened is more than the current buyout to recoup anything at all.

I spoke to the CFO of the dealership and MSDs are different since once the insurance pays out MBFS your obligation is complete and the MSD's are returned to you just as if the lease had ended.

Actually the Tier 1A rate is .00200 but one must auto approve to get this rate- no negoiation. If that was the case with you, the dealer made some "rate" on your deal. Feel free to PM your details and Ill figure it all out for you. But in reality you are happy with the payment and the car so its no real use unless you just want to know.

Edit- since you posted your details Ill break it down here for you (give or take a few dollars)

MSRP is 117985
Gross cap is 113495
Net cap is 110645
Residual is 67200
Depreciation payments is 1206.80 per month
Base pay pre 9.50% tax is circa 1815.00
Rent charge per payment is 608 dollars give or take

Based on this rent charge payment, the factor derived from (residual plus net cap times MF) is .00340 so they made about 1 full point in MF on you. This is not unheard of at all and it appears they covered up their discount this way to get back to MSRP. Their reserve is about 177.84 per payment times 70% (this is called a split) times the term or 4481 in upfront dealer monies. Thats your discount.

You forgot to include they rolled $9470 of negative Cap ( 16 payments of my lease that was left) into the deal

Hummmm is that on your contract or was that a MBFS pull thru? MBFS probably paid 6 payments there and the dealer absorbed the rest. I need to check on the latest programs.

So what was your actual net cap cost (residual and term are fixed)-- if its 110645 then my calculations are right but if its higher then I'd need to recalc things.

Thanks for the disclosures but if you want to go to PM Im good too. I think some might find these details educational though.

OK so here is the actual breakdown.

My payments on my old car was $725 a month x 16 = 11,600

MBFS waived 3 payments only since that is all that model qualified for so Negative equity was $9425.

Adjusted cap was $120,170.

ok so that changes things (thanks)..

Your base rent is 1471.39 (give a few dollars)
Your base rent plus MF is 1815 (give a few dollars) plus tax to 1987.
So MF in dollars is about 343.62

If I back that into the residual plus net cap, you get a MF of .00183 or very close which is too low unless you did MSD's?

or did you do 12k a year or 15k?

Sylvainsm - Let me preface my response by saying two things:

1) I mean no disrespect, truly.

2) In the broader context of what constitutes a "good lease deal" there is simply no such thing on an E63. For context, lease-crazies use the 1% rule to judge. The monthly payment for a 36 month, 10K mi/year lease, $0 CCR, tax excluded, should be under 1% of the MSRP. That'd be around $1200/mo in our case which, until/unless there's a large surplus of $120k E63 cars sitting on lots and dealers start really dealing on discounts (and/or MB artificially jacks up residual values - a practice used by BMW for a long time), that's just not going to happen. But there are folks who chase deals like that into vehicles simply because of the deal. "I want a 5 passenger SUV" now go get a deal on any vehicle that meets that description, rather than "I want a BMW X3" now let me get the best deal possible on an X3. I liken these folks to frequent flyer mile junkies, who will go on and on about the incredible point redemption value they got on round trip business class airfare to a place they wouldn't otherwise want to travel. Not my thing, but they exist.

Anyway, I say all this to give somewhat broader context. I'm well versed in what gap does and doesn't cover, how MSDs function, whether you should finance tax into your payment, whether you should put down a CCR, etc. Frankly, the fact that you put down even one red cent in CCR says much about your general understanding of leases. I humbly suggest you spend some time at leasehackr.com, google "should you put CCR money down on a lease" and further research gap insurance.

Vic55 is almost certainly correct - the dealer is paying for 10 payments, and MB is paying 6. 6 is a not uncommon threshold for this sort of thing, especially when you're moving (far) up the price curve, and even more so if you're coming from a competitor vehicle. Basically your dealer is eating $7500...but we have to ask why? The answer is in your lease terms. Think about it - you're paying more - even "much more" in the context of a lease, for a less expensive car than I am. My car has a $4k higher MSRP, yet my payment is *lower* than yours once you factor in the CCR you're putting down.

At the end of the day, all that matters is that you're happy. We're talking about 1st world issues here, to be sure, and the difference may not matter to you. And I didn't mean the above to seem like a dick-size contest though I acknowledge it may sound that way. But, if what you want is the lowest monthly payment you can find *without violating the generally accepted best-practice approach to leasing* then you can do better than the deal you got. Good wishes regardless and again no disrespect intended.

EDITED - to amend the above based on your post specifying that the dealer paid 13 payments, or $9425. Coincidentally, that's about the difference in our MSRPs plus the buy-down you did with the CCR

No disrespect taken at all. I understand and you are 100% correct to never put a $ of cap reduction down. I did it in this case to have my payments at under the $2k payment number for a business reason.
I lease or purchase more than 8 cars a year and have a dealership license due to the amount of cars I go through just on a personal level.

I understand leases very clearly but the structure of this deal was made this way for a reason. That's it plain and simple. I just was educating others on the liability of cap reduction and up front payments with a lease. Most people do not understand it.

Thanks again!

After all these posts, you think it is better to buy or lease?

I find the lease expensive at 5.9% interest and only 3 years lease.

I rather buy the car and pay it cash. What do you think?

Balloon financing is looking pretty good to me at this point. $1800 for a lease? Good lord. I didn't pay even half that much for my CLA 45 when it came out.

With all due respect, the price points are completely different and you do know that lease money factor dollars are a direct reflection of the net cap cost of the car plus the residual so leases tend to really jump up as the price goes up because:

1. the residuals are generally less percentage wise on higher line non commodity cars.
2. no subvented rates like your CLA45 had
3. more depreciation over the same time period
4. more interest equivalent monies owed since the dollars are that much more
5. more tax on top of the base payment which is obvi higher

You can do your balloon but you are on the hook for the buyout whereas the lessee can walk away and you are paying taxes on the front end of the non balloon portion. I wont even get into the tax benefits of a lease since its been beaten to death over and over and it all applies to each of us differently based on so many variables.

Hi Vic,

Appreciate your wealth of knowledge on this! I feel my dealer is offering me a ridiculous deal and with the MSD money factor reduction, I would like to do this sooner than later. In case the MSD goes away or the dealer backs off of what was offered. They are aware that my lease ends in spring 18, so the deal was not to move one now.

They offered me, on a hypothetical build of about $120,350 ( We did not do an actual build - more like $121,500 the way I want it), a discount of $10,350 off of MSRP. The selling price being $110,000. 3 YR/10K. Nothing down. $118K being the total cost including tax and fees. The payment is $1772 a month with no MSDs, or $1575 a month with 10 MSDs. Factor going from .0023 to .0016.

My question is any programs to get me out of my Audi S6 lease. Lease ends June 1st. I'd like to lock this deal sooner than later (it is great, no?) But not if I have to take a hit. Fwiw, the same guy owns both the MB and Audi dealerships, with whom we have a personal relationship. So there is that.

Thanks Vic!

Wow thats a nice 8.6% off of MSRP which puts you into their holdback numbers (120350 >>> 10350 off). MSD's will never go away- they have been around for so long and should continue indefinitely but I do not know of any "conquest" programs to get you out of a competitor lease with MBFS or MBUSA. Of course they will pull thru their own lessees who have 6 or less payments remaining because they love to keep their customers in Benzes. So you will have to probably work the best deal with either trading the S6 or having them make the remaining lease payments (whichever costs you less in negative equity) and do an early lease return. Whats good is that they have a sister Audi store and should be able to bump the ACV on your trade. I will say this, AudiFS has notoriously low residuals (much lower than Benz) so your payoff should be rather low and maybe below market value so work the store; they will know better than me.

I know the tax benefits both ways. I'm an enrolled agent, heheh. That being said, I don't think this is going to be a car I'm going to want to walk away from. Drove one a couple days ago, and I was immediately hooked. I didn't know that the rates were adjusted for the CLA 45 upon release.

I think ultimately, when I go talk to my friend at the dealer, once I see the numbers side by side, I'll make my decision then. Some of these numbers are just scaring me right now, heh.

Any AMG over 100k should be scary leasewise LOL. The residuals are just not that strong and the MF's are higher so they lock you in because each payment doesn't pay down the balance as much as a subvented lease so its hard to get a payoff that a dealer wants to work with- thus a lot of negative equity.

Ordered in May, arrived this morning to dealership.

List was $131,300
Discount of $4,885
add aquisition fee of $1,095
add wear and tear insurance of $1,295
total Gross Cap Cost = $128,785

7,500/36 = 58% residual
MF buy rate at 0.0023
10 MSD's reduced it to 0.0016
9% tax
total monthly payment $1,995.38

Overall, happy with the deal. Wanted to keep monthly under $2K from the begining when we had no pricing. Dealer was super cool and worked with me on the discont and buy rate without a fight. Had 4 other E63S custom orders he didn't discount a penny and jacked MF to 0.0038, so I walked away very happy. The car is friggin' insane. Magno Grey wth Nut Brown Interior. Super happy with combo. Very unique. Will post pics tomorrow. Thnaks for the info from the everyone here!

That's a good deal. My lease is up in May but my dealer let me put a deposit down to lock in my deal (similar to yours) now. Basically, his next available build slot is for January order lock, so delivery in say March. But, depending on how delivery timeframes look at that time, and whether there is any pull ahead cash available at that time, he's agreed to slide my order back a month if need be. Maybe you can get yours to do the same?

Forgive me guys as I have NEVER leased nor looked into leasing a car before. I've always led the mentality of "if I can't buy it in cash, I can't afford it"

With that said, I have 2 cars that I play around with (2012 Mazdaspeed3 & 2007 911 Turbo) but find myself not driving both enough to justify the cost of two cars (maintenance, insurance, gas, etc.). With that said, I was going to sell them and pickup a 2014 E63S and put the remaining $15-$20K from the sale of the cars into the bank.

Then I saw the W213 and just fell in love with it. I never contemplated owning a $100K+ car unless it was a Lambo/Ferrari and financially don't know if I could pass it by the wife, but why do you guys lease vs financing it?

I will take delivery of my car next wednesday.

Dealer tell me that, they can’t, in Canada, do the 10 MFD’s to reduce rate.

Is this true ?

True. I asked already. Mb Canada used to do this (just like the US)

Everyone will have their own personal reason, but I suspect that in many cases it has to do with taxes. If you purchase a car for business, you can only depreciate it up to a max of something like $23k in Year 1, even if the car cost $1 million. But, if you lease, you can deduct up to 100% of the costs (everything - lease, fuel, maintenance, etc.) if used 100% for business.

The exception are heavy vehicles - the IRS publishes a list each year but think things like the large pickups, Range Rover, Suburban, Porsche Cayenne, etc. wherein the depreciation limits are much much higher.

TL;DR - for business, lease a car or purchase a heavy truck/SUV