Lease return questions...

At the end of June the lease on our '04 C4S is being turned in. It will be replaced with the 997 turbo cab as soon as production gets underway. Regarding turning in the car... the rear tires are almost down to the tread bars. I know that they will be too low by the time the car goes back. The front tires are fine. Two questions: 1 - Do the front and rear tires have to match when you turn the car in? 2 - If the answer to #1 is yes (which I am assuming it is, but wanted to check anyway) do the tires have to be OEM brand when turning the car it? I have seen that it costs almost the same to replace all 4 with a different brand instead of buying 2 rear Pilot N1s. Thanks,

Is it a Porsche lease? If so, my guess would be that a) the tires should match and b) they should be "N" rated tires and the same N rating front and back.

Don't guess. Look at your lease. Or call the lease company. If you do have to replace or get charged, find out what they'd charge if you give them back the worn-out ones. Might be less than buying them yourself. Also, take a look at the buyout price on the lease. If you can sell the car for more....

i highly doubt it. i had some curb rash on a wheel on my 996 when i had pre turn in inspection done. they told me it would cost me a $1k to replace. i had it repaired myself or $200. Its kinda like returning a rental car without a full tank of gas. they don't charge you the going rate for a gallon of gas, they charge you like $6 a gallon.

It is leased through Porsche financial and I'll check the paperwork. One thing I do know is that the buy out price is pretty low. The lease was for 12,000 miles a year and the car is only at 24,000 miles right now. Buy out price is around $55k. I looked on KBB and it said that the private party sale price was around $70k-$72k for a car in good condition. Did Porsche think that the car would depreciate that much more, or did they get something by me with the numbers and we ended up paying too much in the monthly payment? This is a company car, family owned company, and we don't really want to buy it out and then go through the trouble of selling the car. Thanks for the input.

[QUOTE=GNALUZUDid Porsche think that the car would depreciate that much more, or did they get something by me with the numbers and we ended up paying too much in the monthly payment?[/QUOTE] The devil is in the details on how residual value is determined. They'll consider what resale value might look like, sure. But it has more to do with how the lease is financed in the first place (by them), whether or not you made a 'down payment' when you took delivery (a sunk cost for you), and whose risk depreciation is (people assume depreciation is the lessor's risk in a lease, but it's not always so. BMW Financial leases, for example, often demand a four figure down payment AND the lessee takes the risk on depreciation. That's why they can advertise such low lease payments. With no risk to the lessor, they can get better financing on the lease inventory). For cars like these, leases are often geared towards lowering payments, which means that the lessor has covered himself some other way. So, as someone suggested earlier, best idea is to read your lease.

No way you would get 70-72 K in private sale for an 04 C4S. Buy out price is not really that far off. You might be able to get a little more if you sold it yourself, but not that much more. Sounds like you faired pretty well.

I'll add that a good friend just returned is 03 Cab last month and wanted to buy it but the buyout was a good bit over market price. The Lessor (I think Porsche Financial Services) was unwilling to negotiate with him on price. They claimed that they manage their downside risk by taking out insurance on the future value of the car. Therefore if the car deprecates more than expected they file a claim for the difference in value.

If saving a couple of bucks on tires is so important to you, look on Ebay for a couple of good used rears to match your fronts. You may be able to write off the purchase price and mounting expense as well ;-)

I agree that the KBB price of $70k is pretty high. Honestly, the car will most likely get turned in because I don't want to deal with the hassle of selling it. I went through that when we bought out the lease on our '01 M5 (the car before the C4S). Residual was well below market value, but it took about 5 or 6 months for a buyer because the market had been flooded with cars. As for the lease, there was no down payment at all, so it definitely makes me curious. I'll take another look at the paperwork to see what really happened. For the tires, it isn't the dollars that are bothering me. It's just that I have a hard time justifying spending almost $1,000 for two Pilot N1s and then turn the car back in. My thoughts are, if I am going to spend that money on tires then I want to get to use them. I guess it is just the consumer in me that doesn't like to waste money (I know, I could easily make that money, and then some extra, back if the car was bought off lease and then resold). Thanks for all the input guys. I appreciate the comments. Now, if only production would get anounced on the 997 turbo cab so I could stop listening to the lines of BS that my dealership is telling me. Luckily a deposit for the car was put down in October of 2004