Hey Cool Car Fans,

I was recently contacted by a client to consign his 2014 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG that he had put some money into adding some cool modifications through the Mercedes Benz dealer.  Most of the time I see vehicles that have been modified, but usually not a luxury Mercedes Benz wagon and have the additions done through the dealership and certainly not to this level of a horsepower increase.

This is the coolest Mercedes Benz wagon that I’ve personally seen with these unique upgrades. And I like the color combination with the swanky wheels.  The car just looks bad-ass!

Check out the modifications that have been done to this vehicle…

Year: 2014
Make: Mercedes-Benz
Model: E-Class Wagon
Trim: E63 AMG Wagon
Mileage: 15,269
Stock #: JB060599c
VIN #: WDDHH7GB4EB060599
Trans: Automatic
Color: Gray Metallic
Interior: Leather
Vehicle Type: Wagon
Drive Train: AWD
Engine:  5.5L V8 DOHC 32V

• Kleeman – Stage 1 Tune
• Renntech – Down Pipes
• Renntech – Full Exhaust
• Renntech – Lowered Suspension
• Advant Garde 20″ – 3 Piece Wheels with Pirelli PZero Nero Tires (Summer Performance Tires)
• AMG 19″ Wheels with Pirelli SottoZero Tires (Winter Snow Tires)
• Additional 19″ PZero (Summer Performance Tires for AMG wheels)
• Built in – Escort Radar detection system with 4 Laser Jammers

How cool is this ride?  It looks really wild.  I decided to run a lease calculation out of curiosity since I can get a used vehicle lease done on this ride.  So what if someone was to lease it with $2,500 down and had great credit? Here’s a breakdown for someone here in Colorado using a third-party used vehicle leasing company, plus sales tax on the payment and sales tax on the $2,500 cap cost reduction, along with the first payment…

This could be a cool way to get a vehicle with thousands of dollars in major upgrades and have a guaranteed buyer at the end of the lease term, which would be the leasing company.  They could also buy it out based on the residual value at the end of the lease term should they decide they totally love it and what to keep it.

I had to put this vehicle up at CoolCarGuy.com because it is just such a cool luxury wagon.  I have had quite a few people get the Dodge Magnum SRT-8 over the years, but the horsepower with this bad boy is insane as a hard to find and highly customized vehicle.

And it is a Mercedes Benz E63 AMG Wagon, which is super fun to drive with all the latest and greatest technology included.  The owner told me that he has owned Ferrari’s and other high-end sports cars and this is the craziest and the most fun vehicle he has ever driven.

He’s just not driving it enough and asked me to find him a new buyer for his really cool car.

Retail Price: $92,900 – Sold

Cool Car Guy Rating:  Super Cool!

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Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy

John is an auto consultant with his license at a car dealership in Denver, Colorado. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com or Twitter @coolcarguy

Hey Cool Car Fans,

One request that I get quite often from people is if I can help them find a cool car for under $10,000 for their teenager or as an additional vehicle.  Actually, most of the time it’s under $5,000 and they are looking for something cool to drive that is inexpensive.

I’ve owned over 38 automobiles and when I was younger, before Craigslist back when you only had newspaper ads to sell a personal vehicle, I would often buy really inexpensive automobiles drive them for about six months and then sell them.  The joke with my relatives was that I sold a vehicle before it needed an oil change, but that wasn’t actually true.

On the contrary, I would get virtually free transportation which was great when you were in High School or College.  I would look for vehicles that would hold their value pretty well, such as VW Beetles or Honda Preludes, Honda CRX’s and the Toyota Celica for example. I could grab one for $1,500 to $3,000 at the time, put some money into it with a tune up and a coat of wax or a paint job, drive it for six to nine months and sell it for a profit.  CARFAX was not an issue back then because nobody thought twice about a vehicle repaired in an accident.  Nobody had a clue about the history of the vehicle, unless they knew what to look for in the paint, frame, body, etc.

CAN YOU STILL DO WHAT I USED TO DO TODAY?

The key to my cool system for close to free transportation when you’re on a fixed budget is that you have to find high demand vehicles that have a cool factor to them for the a younger generation.  You don’t want super expensive vehicles, but vehicles that people can pay cash or have a very small loan to drive them.  Granted, not everyone is going to be able to do what I did and make money on their vehicles because you have to really know what you’re doing.  I’m just being honest with you that vehicles depreciate.  However, you can certainly minimize your losses, so that you don’t lose a ton of money on a cool car you’re wanting to drive by limiting the amount of depreciation that is taking place.

If I needed to unload an old BMW 3 series, VW Beetle, Honda Prelude, Honda Civic SI wagon it was really easy because there was always a market for these types of vehicles at a low price.  Nobody looked at the odometer of a 1972 VW Super Beetle back in the late 1980’s.  They didn’t care at the price point I was staying in for buying and selling those vehicles.  The same with a Subaru WRX or Mazda Speed 6 for example today.  As long as I wasn’t into it too heavy.  One such vehicle I think you could minimize your losses on is the older Mini Coopers that has the cool factor to it and are finally down in the price range where people can buy one and drive it for a while and then flip it with very little loss.  I’ve been watching them for quite a few years and I’ve been seeing them now going through the Dealer Auctions for under $10,000.  Sometimes I have seen them for under $5,000 depending on the miles and if they are a manual transmission or an automatic.

MANUAL TRANSMISSION OR AUTOMATIC

The majority of people don’t know how to drive a stick, which is really tragic and it’s also less costly to maintain than an automatic.  When I cruise through the Dealer Auctions looking at vehicles the amount of miles on the some of the manual transmissions can be really high, but the vehicles still look really good and are holding their value pretty well.

Like this 2011 Hardtop Mini Cooper that I recently spotted.  The problem though is if the clutch goes out on the Mini Cooper it can be a costly repair if you’re not going to do it yourself.  If you do it yourself, you will find Youtube videos about it and some after-market places like Pelican give you details on how to do it, but it’s a job labor wise.  Here’s a link to a good article from a shop on the costs to replace a clutch in various automobiles at Central Automotive in Kent, WA.  It’s a ballpark.

This Mini though would sell for about $9,500, which is under $10,000, but it has almost 149,000 miles on it. That is still a bit pricey in my book, but it’s because of the year.  I could probably get the dealer to come down on the price though if I was buying it for a client because most people don’t know how to drive a stick shift and the miles will scare most people.  That’s just a quick example though.  The bigger issue with these vehicles is if you should get an S with the turbo or a standard Mini without the S.  I don’t think it matters that much depending on the price point because a turbo can go out and cost more money and if you just want a cool car to spin around in the non-turbo is still fun to drive.  You will definitely pay a premium for an S on the used market that you won’t on the standard model.

WHAT ABOUT THE CLUBMAN OR THE COUPE

MINI has come out with quite a few models since bringing back the Mini Cooper.  I’m starting to see the Clubman, which is the bigger station wagon mini with the doors that open in the year showing up for under $10,000 now as well.  Which is pretty cool, but the newer version is much more like a MAXI than a MINI, but the 2009 I spotted had only 55,000 miles and again was under $10,000.  This is another vehicle in the Mini world that could be a nice option.  The one I put photos of here was an automatic.  Personally, I like the classic MINI much better than the additional models they have added to their lineup, but to each his own.

What about reliability and maintenance on older vehicles like these?  It really depends on how many miles the vehicle has and how you take care of it.  I get people who contact me about selling their Classic Cars or giving them tips about owning some of their older vehicles all the time.  It’s true that there can be some costly repairs with these vehicles, like a clutch replacement or a rear main seal, but many times you just have to use some common sense.  If you don’t want to do the work yourself then shop around.

For example, you don’t have to take your vehicle to the Mini Dealership for maintenance work anymore than you have to take a Mercedes Benz to the Mercedes Benz dealership.  I recently had an estimate to replace just the brake pads on a Mercedes Benz GLK at the dealership of $298 and I was able to get the same work done at my local Tires Plus facility for $106. The vehicle needed brake pads, so why would I spend almost $200 more for a soda at the Mercedes Benz dealership while I waited for the technician to put on brake pads.  Again, you have to use some common sense when it comes to vehicles.

The point of this article though is that there are now plenty of cool little Mini Coopers and other cool vehicles on the used market that are getting into that first car, teenager or extra car for better gas mileage price range.  At the time that I wrote this article, a quick search through the Manheim Dealer Auction revealed over 330 different Mini Coopers that were available for under $10,000 on average.  That’s quite a selection to choose from, which I thought was pretty cool and worth mentioning in this article.  I will probably put some other vehicles here that are under $10,000 that I can help my clients and followers find.

Hey Cool Car Fans,

As a professional automotive consultant I cannot tell you how many times I have had people tell me that they have been told that they should never lease a vehicle.  It’s true that sometimes leasing a vehicle is a really bad idea.  In fact, I’ll be the first to tell you that I’ve seen some really crazy leases that people put themselves into that come back to bite them a few years after the new car smell has long worn off.  Over the years, I have acquired some great stories and a few good friends of mine keep trying to convince me to write a book about my life as The Cool Car Guy.  Maybe someday I’ll put a few of my collection of stories down into a book that goes beyond my blog here at CoolCarGuy.com.  For now, I enjoy writing here online and sharing information with the fans of CoolCarGuy.com.

YOU’RE HOW MANY MILES OVER YOUR LEASE?

Like the time that I had a good friend of mine tell me about how a broker he knew pulled a guy out of his lease on his truck, who was almost 60,000 miles over the allocated miles.  Had he pulled him out of his lease and bought out the vehicle correctly that would have been a good idea, but he didn’t know what he was doing.  At least he thought he knew what he was doing and believed that he had pulled the guy out of his lease.  He didn’t do it correctly and his client got a bill from the manufacturer, which I won’t mention here, but it was for $.25 per mile for each of the 60,000 additional miles.  The guy got a bill for close to $15,000 because the expert didn’t know what he was doing and accidentally had turned the vehicle back into the manufacturer instead of buying it out.  That guy will probably never lease a vehicle again and has a nightmare story to tell. Was the lease actually a bad lease?  For starters, why would you go 60,000 miles over the miles you purchased and wait until the end of the lease to get out of that situation?  And the guy who he worked with was inexperienced and didn’t know what he was doing.  It was the classic case of when two fools met.

THANKS FOR THE LEASING INFORMATION COOL CAR GUY!

Recently, I had a woman referred to me and ask me to assist her in getting an Audi Q5.  She wanted to get a used Audi Q5 in a specific color and a payment of under $400 a month.  It had to be a very specific color.  She didn’t want to lease the vehicle because she had heard about how bad leasing was and instead she wanted to finance a used one.  I explained to her the benefits of leasing and how it can make sense when structured correctly and that I could even help her lease a used Audi Q5, so that she would hit her payment with minimal money down and be in an equity position at the end of the lease.  I spent a great deal of time with her looking for that perfect used vehicle and then she started to go dark as I call it.  She was going to wait on this vehicle that she couldn’t wait to get her hands on before and maybe go and test drive a new Audi Q5.  I didn’t mind by that time because I had spent so much time on trying to meet her expectations that I was ready to take a break too.

What had happened though is once she realized the benefits of leasing after talking with me, she had the brilliant idea of going and leasing a new vehicle on her own at the local Audi dealership.  I never recommended that she do this, but armed with my expertise she figured she was now much smarter than The Cool Car Guy.  I’m not being mean, but simply pointing out that what seems simple is often much more complex because leasing is a financial transaction.  Sure, you can go and meet with a lawyer and then choose to represent yourself in a court of law because you don’t want to pay a lawyer.  It doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea though.

I contacted her after she leased her new Audi Q5 and she told me that she was sorry she didn’t work with me, but that she got a “great deal” with $4,000 down and a $500 a month payment and 7,500 miles a year on her lease.  I was quoting her $1,000 down and 15,000 miles a year to get to $400 a month.  If you take $100 a month times 36 months that is $3,600 in savings and the buyout at the end of the lease that I was recommending would have put her in an equity position.  At the end of her new vehicle lease, she will be giving it back to Audi and walking away with nothing and if she goes over her miles it is $.25 a mile like the guy with his truck.  What she did is not even close to a good deal let alone a great deal.  I’m quite sure that three years from now she will be one of the many people who go around telling people how “leasing is a bad deal”.   As long as she doesn’t tell anyone that I recommended that she lease a vehicle!  I didn’t recommend that deal.

EVERY PERSON’S SITUATION IS DIFFERENT

Let me give you an example where a lease makes great sense.  Recently, a woman was referred to me who had filed bankruptcy a little over a year ago.  This was an elderly woman who had never purchased a vehicle on her own.  She had been told by numerous banks, lenders and dealerships that they could finance her at around 19.95% interest.  I got her credit application and submitted it to a lender that specializes in bankruptcy car loans and they approved her for a $400 a month payment based on her income at 19.95%.  That didn’t seem like a good deal to me after looking over her credit and seeing that I could probably get her approved on a lease through one of the leasing companies. She told me that her ideal vehicle was a Toyota RAV4 or Honda CRV.  I went ahead and took the time to see what I could put together for her with the same $1,000 down that the bank wanted if she were to finance at 19.95%.

Even though she only drives about 10,000 miles a year, I structured the lease, so that she would be allocated 15,000 miles per year.  This way she wasn’t looking at the odometer or having to worry about going over her miles and I configured the lease based on a 2015 Toyota RAV4 with a Sport package.  She was shocked that I was able to get her approved through the leasing company that I used and that her payment with sales taxes was a little more than $350 a month instead of the $400 a month that she was looking at for a $14,000 used vehicle plus sales tax. And what was the interest rate of the lease?  It had an effective interest rate of about 2.49%!  That’s right, less than $18 a month was going toward interest with this lease compared to about $151 a month of her payment going toward interest on the purchase for an older used vehicle that would certainly need repairs over three to five years.  Over five years she would have paid over $9,100 in interest on a $14,000 vehicle.  I would much rather help her get a business of her own for that additional $151 a month!

The great news is that she is getting to drive a vehicle that is under the manufacturer’s warranty with new tires, free maintenance for two years and she gets to buy it out in two years for about $16,500, which is less than the market value of a three year old Toyota RAV4.  If I didn’t know anything about leasing and she hadn’t been referred to me then she would probably be paying over $151 in interest to a bank on a used vehicle.  She’s pretty happy about her vehicle and that’s really cool.

And those are a few stories about leasing that I thought I would share at CoolCarGuy.com.  By the way, I finance vehicles for people all the time as well and I have clients who pay cash for vehicles too.

Hey Cool Car Fans,

I have been following the Tesla car company since before it first became available for sale. I’ve never seen a vehicle with so much positive press from the media that has a love affair with this vehicle.   One reason why is because so many investors have paid the Piper with their stock trading from $177 to $292 with a $25.6B market cap over the last 52 weeks from a car company that is a pimple on the butt of the entire auto industry.

If that sounds harsh, let’s just be real for minute and look at how many vehicles Tesla sold last year out of the 17.15 million vehicles sold in the United States that we can verify at Trading Economics.com. After all, company sales is what is supposed to drive the success of a company right?  There is a reason why you cannot purchase a new Saab, Pontiac, Hummer or Suzuki anymore in the United States and that’s because of lack of sales, but that doesn’t seem to matter when it comes to Tesla.  This company has never shown a net profit according to their financial statement that you can view here at MarketWatch.com, drop down to the Net Income line where last year they lost $294M on $3.2B in sales.  Their balance sheet looks great because they are sitting on a boatload of cash, but how many vehicles did they actually sell last year out of the 17.15 million that were sold?

Trying to figure this out is much harder than it should be for a public company with so much positive press!  You have to dig a little deeper than you would think because the media’s darling doesn’t want people to really do what I’m doing now and ask this obvious question.  Instead they write articles about how Tesla doesn’t think they can do 500,000 sales by the end of the decade!  They think they can maybe do half that number or about 240,000 vehicles by the year 2020, so you can read articles like this that have such a positive spin.  In 2004, there were 28,898 Hummer H2’s sold in the United States, which was quite a few for such a specialty SUV and by 2008 when they pulled the plug they sold 12,431 deeming that it wasn’t worth continuing.  Last year, Tesla missed their mark of selling 35,000 vehicles and they sold 31,600 units according to SeekingAlpha.com.

Now I will go back to my statement again that they are a pimple on the butt of the entire auto industry because any kid in Elementary School can divide 31,600 into 17,150,000 and arrive at a percentage of the market that Tesla has command over.  When you do this you arrived at a figure of .00184257 or 0.18% of the automobile industry and yet there is more press about this revolutionary Wall Street company than any other car company. Forget that other car companies have electric cars or hybrid cars or all kinds of cool new technology, the focus is always on Tesla.

Recently, a client and friend of mine sent me an article to get my opinion on since he is thinking of getting a Tesla.  You can read it here at Investopedia.com and I had to chuckle when I read it.  The author makes a case about what a great value it is to drive a Tesla because you don’t have to stop at a gas station or worry about maintenance on your vehicle since Tesla is willing to buy back your Tesla after three years at 46% of the purchase price.  Oh my gosh, how nice of them since it is a lease!  Are you kidding me?  It is called a residual value and every car manufacturer and leasing company gives you a residual at the end of the lease.  In fact, I’m leasing a Toyota Tacoma TRD today to a client for $296.15 a month including sales tax with only $800 down at 15,000 miles a year and the buyout at the end of the lease is almost 75% of the MSRP after 39 months!

You can lease an AWD BMW 328i right now and get free maintenance for three years and the residual at the end of the lease on a 3 Series BMW is 50% from BMW and possibly better through some of the other leasing sources.  Last time I checked 50% is better than 46%?  However, billionaire Elon Musk, the guy who started PayPal is really good at math like most of the tech savvy people in Silicon Valley, and all I can figure is that they are assuming that most doctors, lawyers and CEO’s who would buy their vehicle, are not very good at math, so they come up with stupid articles like the one that I just read appealing to emotion.  The math doesn’t add up if you put a pencil to it compared to other vehicles in the same class.  This is not a vehicle you purchase to save money.  It’s not designed for that, but to have a “cool” factor.

The writer actually has a section in the article called “THE MATH” to break down how much money you would spend over five years if you sell it back to Tesla at a 46% residual value.  I kid you not, she used a five year plan and it’s a three year lease for the 46% buy back?  How many people reading that article will actually catch that flaw in the numbers?  Most will not and that’s why I got a chuckle out of the article because it’s not any different that people who call me to lease a high-end luxury vehicle for a really low price from an ad on television and they miss the fine print that the lease is only for 10,000 miles a year with $3,000 or $5,000 down.  The crazy thing to me is the same people who would never dream of leasing a vehicle because they think it is a rip-off are on a waiting list to lease a Tesla because of the marketing behind it.

I actually like the Tesla Model S and I really like the Tesla Roadster even better, but I just get tired of seeing the non-stop B.S. surrounding this car company by people who know very little about cars.  It’s a specialty vehicle for a niche’ market and it’s a very cool car.  I have clients who own them and I’ve driven them and there is a definite “Wow” factor like driving a Nissan GTR, but there are things to consider with this vehicle that seems to rarely get any bad press.  I think the Nissan GT-R is a super cool vehicle, but most people do not know that there was a class-action lawsuit against Nissan that was settled for transmission issues with that vehicle.  You can read about it at Autoblog, so my point is to not get lost in the ether with the media and know what you’re buying before you pull the trigger on a Tesla or any other vehicle for that matter.

Losing 54% of a vehicle’s value in three years is not a great deal compared to other vehicles on the market is my main point in writing this article since you can do that with most luxury cars that cost much less to drive and are easier to unload at the end of the lease term.  Before Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover to India based Tata Motors in 2008 for $2 billion, they had put a lease program together back around 2004 where you could lease a Jaguar X-Type for around $300 a month with a ridiculous residual value.  Anyone who could afford to lease a Jaguar X-Type and didn’t jump on it because of concerns of reliability was crazy because Ford was basically subsidizing people to drive their vehicle.  I don’t see Tesla doing that sort of thing yet with a 46% residual and a high payment.  They may be forced to at some point to grab more marketshare and get more people driving their vehicles, so my advice is to wait and see what happens.