I drive a 2003 Toyota Rav4, as seen here:
It’s a good truck, doesn’t get bad gas mileage for what it is, and with the good tires on it (and the appropriate amount of caution and experience) I don’t have trouble in adverse weather conditions. But it was a lease, set to expire next month.
We’ve gone back and forth about whether we were going to pay it off or give it back.
This week Michael met with a representative from Toyota and we decided to keep it. It came down to a few factors:
1. We’ve kept up on the pricey scheduled maintenance so the truck is running great, Toyotas can last well over 100K miles and it is at only 65K right now.
2. I’m comfortable with the truck, I won’t have to worry about getting used to a new car AND a new, more challenging commute in the same month
3. The payoff balance was low relative to investing in another vehicle
4. Mileage overage charges (for 17K miles – oops!) and a small cosmetic dent in the back panel (of unknown origin, we just noticed it one day and were like “…HEY WTF!”) were really going to cost us if we turned it in.
In all, I’m not particularly happy with the whole lease thing, they really rake you over the coals if you go over your mileage and their “normal wear and tear” rules are pretty unforgiving, even on a truck that we’ve kept clean and meticulously cared for since purchase – we rarely even have passengers in the back seat! We won’t be doing a lease again.
But we could have made out worse, some car leases require that you pay off your mileage overage and any cosmetic repairs even when you decide to buy the car following the lease. Plus we don’t have to deal with the dealership that sold us the truck anymore, which is a good thing since I haven’t been terribly pleased with them over the past couple years.
Yay I get to keep my truck :)