Should I Buy Or Lease?

There is no simple correct answer to the lease/buy question, just as there is no simple answer to the question: should I wear a white sweater while eating Spaghetti Bolognese? Making the right decision for yourself is a matter of your personal desires, values, current financial status, and your ability to avoid making a mess of things.

Cars lined up

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Auto leasing has been around for decades and once upon a time offered small business owners significant tax advantages. Those days are long gone, but leasing has caught fire in the last few years, spurred by manufacturers who use special lease deals to promote their vehicles. Industry experts estimate that next year leasing will represent as much as 35% of the new-car market. Among the luxury brands it’s often as high as 80%.

Certainly with this kind of acceptance Read more . . .

Pssst: Wanna (Not) Buy A Stolen Car?

Would you buy a used car–with cash–from someone you just met in the bar, and who walked you down a dark alley to show you the car? Not likely. How about from a well-dressed, friendly, middle-aged man or woman, who placed a classified ad in your local newspaper, and who meets you midday at a restaurant of your choice?

Red car with cartoon character

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Oops! You may be more likely to be cheated by seller number two. That’s the story of Jennifer Warwa, who bought a minivan and had her mechanic examine it. The mechanic later said how shocked he was that Jennifer had been scammed:

“Because I met the gentleman who was selling the vehicle. Very clean cut. In his fifties.  Very soft spoken…. And Read more . . .

Take Your Car On Vacation

Some people use their car only as an appliance. It is strictly a conveyance to get them from A to B, and they don’t get any more emotionally attached to their cars than they would to their vacuum cleaner, blender or garbage disposal. But then there are those of us who do get emotionally attached to our cars. We bond with our vehicles, and they, for all intents and purposes, become members of our families. They serve us faithfully and go with us to important functions. They are with us when memories are being made–occasions like family vacations, for example. Read more . . .

Is The Car Industry Nuts?

Everybody I know who attended the North American International Auto Show in Detroit left Cobo Hall shaking his or her head. In looking for common threads within the mind-boggling expensive exhibition of the latest wares from the world’s car companies one trend was obvious–there was no trend. Or, perhaps more accurately, there were several trends, some running in parallel but others clearly contradictory to one another. If one were to take a clinical view, one might say the auto industry is demonstrating a serious case of schizophrenia. And that disease, if indeed it is a disease, was never more apparent than at the press conferences that preceded the public opening of the Detroit auto show. Read more . . .

Cars Lasting Longer Than Ever

Interior of a red car

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If you think today’s cars are built better than those in the good old days, it isn’t just your imagination.   According to R. L. Polk & Co., the automotive data provider that tracks such things, current vehicles are less likely to go to the junk heap than ever. In 2005,  just 4.3% of total passenger cars and trucks were scrapped, and this overall motor vehicle scrappage rate represents a historic low, besting a mark set in 1949 when a slow startup of auto production after World War II meant new cars were hard to come by.

Another indication that cars are lasting longer is the increasing median age of U.S. vehicles, which has increased across all major vehicle categories.   Median car age  Read more . . .