Car lease???? Mini Cooper?

Question

Hello,

I hope you guys can help me. I have recently secured a new job
(yeah!) and I have been told that I need to have a look at business car leases. My employer has mini coopers as their lease cars and I need to find one for myself! I have been looking on the internet and I don't understand the difference between non maintainted and fully maintained car leases and other details regarding these contracts. I f anyone can help that would be great. In addition to this if you know any websites which are cheap for lease cars that would be excellent, thank you in advance for you help.

Answer 1

First, a lease means that you should never get ownership of the car, the ownership resides with the lessor, in this case probably a finance house.

For you there are essentially three kinds of lease possible, finance only, non-maintenance and full maintenance.

In a finance only deal you sign up with a finance company, say Lombard or GE Finance. You tell them the car and how many miles you expect to do and what you think the car will be worth in, say, 3 years time(The residual value), if you don't know dont worry they are pretty expert at these things. They will then quote you a rate per month based on the cost of the car to them and what it will be worth after the period of time/miles.

They are very experienced and will not let you put too high a residual value on the car in order to keep your payments down.

They may offer you a lease in which all the cost of the car is paid for and when at the end of the lease it is sold, you get say 95% of the value, but it must be sold to a third party, not you or the leasing company.

If you were less than honest, which I am sure you are not, you could sell this to a friend and buy it back again at the same price, which device is called 'third partying'.

Where is the advantage to you here? Well the leasing company can claim back the VAT on the car, so you are not funding the VAT up front but paying it monthly and only on the depreciated value not the whole value, so the interest element will seem very low. Additionall, you are not paying the interest on the VAT, which helps keep the price down.

You will be responsible for Road Tax and servicing breakdown the whole caboodle, it's all down to you. You need to find out if in these circumstances your employer will stand some of these expenses for you.

The Reg document can be in your name.

A 'Non-Maintenance lease' is different and usually done by 'Contract Hire' companies. Some of the larger ones will not be interested in a 'one-off' deal, others will have a department set up for it.

In a non-maintenance lease the leasing company will quote you based on the cost of the car to them and the years/milage equation mentioned above, i.e the more the years the lower the rate, the higher the mileage the higher the rate.

In the circumstances the Contract Hire company usually (but not always) pays for the Road Tax. The price is fixed per month, unless Road Tax or VAT changes and at the end of the car is theirs. They have to protect themselves so there will be clauses in the lease to deal with over mileage and condition on return. If you go over mileage and the car is a travelling dustbin you WILL get charged, and rightly so.

They may also charge you for a new set of tyres of you send it back barely legal in that department

Full maintenance lease is as above but the leasing company will arrange for the supply of all the servicing. IF you go for this one check the policy on tyres, they may restrict the numbers and you have to pay thereafter.

I cannot tell you exactly because I do not know enough about your circumstances but on the surface of it, go for a simple finance lease, the other two are for companies who consider they have better things to do than look after vehicles.

Why, well evidently the 'Contract Hire' companies buy the car at much the same price as you and then add in their 'margin'. The Finance houses are primarily concerned with your ability to pay and keeping the risk down, other than that they usually want their interest in the money.

It might be helpful to find out who your new empolyer uses, if you can 'piggy-back' on that you could get a better deal.

Just type 'car leasing' into Google and you will have more offers that you can cope with, it is very crowded field.

Answer 2

You should submitt an internet inquiry to your local BMW mini cooper dealer..they should be able to explain in fine detail the differences between your lease options. Mini Coopers have a great residual value they do not depreciate as fast as most other cars..you may want to consider a purchase especially if you do alot of driving...or unless you don't mind essentially "renting" a car. Leases are great if you are more concerned with a lower car payment than ever owning the vehicle outright. I would strongly encourage you to do your shopping via internet...this could save you some serious money. Good Luck!!

Answer 3

Try speaking to JCT600,they seem to be very good for contract hire or lease of cars in the UK.They should be able to quote you whatever car you choose !
Good luck.

Answer 4

those cars are very ugly