From what I learned, the base has best residual and therefore leases the best

 

I'm learning a lot here. If I ever buy a car with financial efficiency in mind, I'll know what to do. Should have done it 40 cars ago!

 

Just to chime in on my deal.

2017 911 4S
MSRP 140K
7500 miles per year
$5000 down (Put this at time of writing my order to gaurantee it)
$1895 / Month

 

Just negotiated a base C2- MSRP $104k
7500/yr
1390
$3,000 at signing.

Just try and find a good build on anyone's lot or an allocation for your own build.

 

It might help to mention the cap cost and how many months are included in your leases.

When I was looking to lease a Cayenne, the base version carried the highest residual.

___________
2014 991 TT
2013 958 CD

 

I did 0 cap cost, just first payment, bank fee, tax, lic/reg. Residual is $65,000. I like the flexibility you get when you lease. Particularly with the 992 coming out in a couple of years.

 

What was the discount from MSRP, residual %, money factor? Is your payment including tax?

 

I was able to get 5.75% off MSRP. Residual is 63%. Yes, payment include sales tax. I'll get the money factor Monday. We concluded basic negotiations by phone late this afternoon. I just built the same car on the configurator, the MSRP comes out $1,600 more. So the discount would be closer to 7% on a newly ordered car- if you can even find an allocation. To get the same payment on a purchase, I'd need to put up about $14,000.

 

So he is paying $72K+ to rent a car for three years? or $2 per mile?

 

how many months is your lease?

 

Leasing puts the depreciation right in your face then you pay that only. Depressing but a good write off.

 

36 months.
Just an added note- normally I shop the crap out of a car. And I've been looking for a long time. Problem is, I had a lot of trouble figuring out exactly what I wanted, MT or PDK, GT Silver, Agate, Black, Graphite Blue, cab or coupe, Bose or base stereo and dont get me started on trying to select the wheels.
After some time, I realized good builds don't stay around for long, so you have to jump. So it is what it is. It's a Porsche, it makes no economic sense, but it's pure joy and it's hard to value that. We love our Cayenne Diesel, it turns long trips into first class adventures. Looking forward to the 911.

 

Lots of good advise already. Here's some things I've learned on leases in general.

1. Lease deals vary widely based on make, model and demand. Generally the models a manufacturer wants to be perceived as exclusive, are just released and/or are in high demand will have high money factors. Sometimes finance deals are better but you need to consider how your state handle sales tax and how much you will drive the car. Money factors can also vary by what you pay up front. We paid a full three year lease on a Toyota and the money factor was cut in half. Don't want to do this though because if your car is totaled, you lose all that. Some insurance companies offer insurance for that.

2. Some makes are easier to transfer a lease out to someone else. Not sure what they are now but at one point Honda did not allow lease transfers, Porsche did but you were still responsible if the next person defaulted, BMW and MB allowed lease transfers without being liable of default.

3. Sales tax and sales tax credits vary by state. In CA, you only pay sales tax for each month you lease the car. However, if you buy a car in CA, you pay full sales tax on the full amount and don't get a sales credit on trade-ins. If you are buying a a $100k car every couple years in CA, you're paying about 8.5% in sales tax on the full purchase price each time.

4. It doesn't matter if you pay cash, finance or lease a car, at some point you may have to explain to the IRS why your car expense is a business expense. Lease does not automatically equal write-off.

5. I take all of the above into consideration when deciding. For my Porsche's I realized I drove them only about 3k miles/yr and traded them about every three years. After leasing my first two new Porsches, I have financed the last three CPO PCars. Another example is our last Honda Odyssey lease. Most people would just have traded it in at the end of the lease. I knew there was a decent amount of equity on ours because I got a great deal on it. Instead of turning it in, I told them to trade it in and take the equity out of it and put it towards a lease on a new one.

 

This is really great info, well said! I'm in PA and the sales tax situation is very different. On a purchase, when you trade the car you are credited against the new car purchase for the value of the trade for sales tax purposes. So on a car that has a trade value of say, $50K, you save $3K on the sales tax of the new car purchased (our sales tax is 6%). None of that is available when leasing. Also, on a lease we pay 9% on the monthly lease payment, which I guess is the state's way of trying to get full sales tax on a lease. I can see why in CA leasing would make alot more sense.

Because of this tax situation in PA I'm a much bigger fan of using a PenFed balloon loan rather than a lease, since the balloon is still a purchase and I get the full benefit of the sales tax credit.

 

You might want to take a look at the PenFed "payment saver" balloon loan option. On a $100K, 36 month loan the payment is $1,300/month. Big difference is that the residual thru them after 3 years is about $57K. If your residual thru Porsche is 63% that's about $65K on a $104K MSRP. If your state also allows a sales tax credit when you trade a purchased vehicle, you could have $10K additional equity with PenFed. Something to consider possibly.

Add to that about $3,000 savings at $90/month and you could be ahead by as much as $13K. At some point this starts to look like real money