Value of trading a daily driver lease early?

[Blokko]

Gents, I have no idea of 'the value' (if any) of trading my daily driver early. I have a Ford Escape that I have leased for 3 years / 31,500 miles. Now 2 1/2 years into the lease I'm getting contacted by the Ford Main Stealer as well as other dealerships inviting me to trade in my current lease early for a new car.

 

Ford has indicated that I can have a new car for 'about the same as you are paying now'. The car I have is fine and I could happily carry on driving it for another 6 months. I can't work out whether it is in my interest to see the lease out or to go for something new now? The car has only covered 14k miles - is there any value / bargaining power in the remaining miles?

 

Apologies if the above seems like a dumb question - as a Brit with no prior experience of leasing a car this is all very new to me.

[scannon]

I leased a 2014 WRX hatch. A couple of months before the end of the lease I checked what used ones were going for and the book values and determined I had substantial equity in the car. It had 15k miles and was pretty much as new.

 

Instead of buying out the lease and selling the car I traded it in on a 2016 Ram 1500. I didn't have to pay any end of lease fees nor did I have to pay sales tax on the balance of the lease which I would have had to do had I bought the car from the lease company.

 

I got a little more than $4k from the car and as it was at the end of December there were serious rebates and along with some 4 hours of negotiation they took a little over $14k below MSRP and the lease equity was then applied as a down payment. I've leased a number of cars but never before was there any equity at the end. WRXs are a hot item around here and the 2014 was the last year for the hatch back WRX.

[Blokko]

Thanks Skip.

 

I popped to the Main Stealers yesterday and it turned out to be a bit of a wasted journey (though I did get to test drive a couple of cars). Their very best "I'm cutting my own throat here" 'deal' that they could manage increased my monthly payments by a third! They reckoned that they could get a better deal if I came back in August (at which point Ford would write off the last 3 lease payments). This gives me a bit more time to get round the various other (non-Ford) dealerships that have been contacting me recently - will see if those mythical, too good to be true deals for 'well qualified lessees of competitor vehicles' actually exist....