How can you lease and do performance upgrades?
 

Hey guys. This is going to be my first brand new car and was wondering if anyone knows ways to lease and upgrade the FRS with performance parts without breaking the lease contract. Ideas legal and sneaky are welcome. Also, do you think lease options are okay with TRD stuff?

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I believe you can have a leased modified car by having everything factory-installed or dealer-installed.. So the car can only have what they already put in it. That's my guess anyway.

I guess I cold just do bolt ons then take em off for servicing.. thoughts on that?

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intake or similar bolt ons, simply just remove it before servicing. Exhuast should be fine

Pretty much turn it in stock when the lease is over, or if you plan on buying the car after the lease then by all means go turbo it or something

You'll have to go TRD. Unfortunately anything else will be will probably a violation of your contract.

I feel a lot of guys leasing would have benefited from this:

http://www.toyota.com/financial/buy-or-lease/quiz.html

Pretty sure it doesn't matter what you do to it as long as you have it completely stock when you turn it in at the end of your lease. I'd read your lease agreement if thats what your doing.

A leased car is NOT your car. Legally, you can not modify the car. You can however, mod the car all you want as long as you return it to stock before the final inspection and returning it to the dealer. Just make absolutely sure you keep your stock parts, and don't modify it in a way that is irreversible.

Mod the car with (relatively) easily removeable bolt-ons. Don't take it back to the dealer for service, do the oil changes, etc yourself. If you don't buy the car at lease end, return the car to stock and sell off the mods. I don't see any issues with it.

Will the dealership really have an issue if you bring it in for services with mods?

Im modding mine, and plan on buying it after the lease is up. Im keeping all of my original parts just in case, but I was still going to take it in for the oil changes.

it wont be an issue, but if it is extensively modded, they will make note of it in the system should anything relevant to the mods go wrong.

You can do whatever you want, but you'll either have to return the car to stock before turning it in or buy the car after your term is up. Also might want to read the fine print of the lease agreement, because I'm pretty sure that anything major will violate it. The whole point of a lease (from a dealer's perspective) is they get to have a car that they can sell in 2-3 years down the line in a generally good condition. If they find out you're tinkering with the engine, there might be some kind of penalty at the end (not sure...just speculating).

It's all going to depend on the dealership honestly...some technicians will do the oil change and ignore any other parts, other dealerships require the tech to note aftermarket parts (buy or lease) as they appear. It's one of the reasons these "service included" for 24 months make me leery, it's just a reason to get in the engine bay and snoop. You might be able to gauge the shop by the kinds of vehicles parked in the employee area (if there are modified cars, tech probably respects proper mods, will defend they didn't cause problems).

Just like negotiating the price for sale, when you bring the car back for the lease turn in you are going to negotiate any damage, service visits (they usually want you to service with a dealer), etc. Think of it as you would negotiating a trade-in on a new car.

Whichever way you go I wouldn't bother trading in/turning in a 2-3 year old car with mods, it'd be a better choice to take them off and sell them used, since most dealers will usually strip it anyhow and you're not going to get extra cash for them.

You can 100% do it, I have many friends who have done it. As others have said you must keep all the stock parts and return it in stock form.

As long as you don't do anything crazy most dealers won't report anything during service.

Whatever you do do not return it with mods on it, you will not just get no money for them they will actually consider it damage and take money away.

If the value of the car with the mods is more than your payout you can always buy out your lease and then sell the car.

Is it really ever worth it to lease a car? Lower monthly payment?

There are times that it makes sense to lease. There are some people who prefer to drive an in warranty car at all times. This would mean switching cars every 3 years on average. 3 Years into a loan you are most likely going to be upside down on the car and you would loose money on trade or selling it.

If you are the kind of person who likes a new car all the time than leasing is 100 percent better than buying.

Now if you keep a car for a minimum 5 years than buying wins.

My Tundra is a "lease to own".. lease for 3 years with the option to buy at the end of the lease.

My dealership told me I am allowed to do mods to the truck... even said I could leave them on at the end of the lease and they will take the mods into consideration and could help the value (if they are tasteful mods) or take away from the value.

I plan to own the truck after the lease anyway so I have treated it like its mine anyway.

A straight up lease? Might call your dealership and ask before you do any major mods.

Just don't be like the dumb kids that paint their mirrors, and do a bunch of other silly expensive things that are hard to reverse (such as painting stock wheels etc)

Shhhhh! I wouldn't speak out loud on what you would do or want to do with a leased car. You don't want to have the same fate as the Mazda RX-8 people who voided their warranty by posting their drifting gallery on the RX-8 forum only to have Mazda trace the forum and void all the drifters.

I AM leasing my car and as long as the mods are bolt on or easy to take off you will be fine. I have a unichip on mine and all I have to is unplug mine and it will be right back to stock. Focus on simple performance mods and you will be good to go. You can still have fun with mods on a lease car and if you like what you did at the end you can always buy :)!!! Just keep your stock parts as a back up. Lucky for us... when it comes to the intake; I would just go with a drop in,makes it a lot easier and most of us like in compared to a full system.

Good Luck Buddy...enjoy the car...and break some rules ;)

this.

For me, the payment is lower, and I really don't like keeping cars more than 2-3 years. This lease thing will be new to me, but I'm also using it for this very thing...to help prevent me from spending a ton of money on the car.

I'd like to just buy the car and do a few small (and reversible) things and be happy knowing that I CAN'T do more...just wouldn't make sense. I lost a TON of money on the last car I bought (MS3, before the GTO) trying to chase different paths to make it faster....wound up with nothing but empty pockets. The GTO was a real turning point for me and my thought process about cars. The mods I could do just weren't worth it (either too little gain for too much money, or equivalent to putting lipstick on a pig) or too expensive ($3k+ for a "cheap" supercharger). So, I just learned to be happy with it until I could get something else.

That's what the FR-S will be. I plan to do a couple of small things, but nothing I will lose a lot of money on or that I can't take off the car and sell later. I have accepted the car will be slow...can't change that on my budget. I can change how it looks a little to suit my taste, and change a few other small things about it, but knowing I only have the car for 3 years really reigns in on what I'm willing to do.

Off topic, sorry.

As someone who's worked for a Toyota dealership in both sales and service for the last six years or so, and is currently a service writer:

You can do with it generally as you please. At the termination of your lease (I.E. the end of the contract or if the car gets repo'd, etc) the car must generally have "safe" tires and brakes, no big dings, and all factory equipment. If its not on the car as delivered to you, Toyota Financial will bill you for the missing parts at list price - not the dealer.

Warranty claims are still submittable with aftermarket parts, but the same guidelines apply - suspension noise with coilovers? Running lean code with an intake? Probably not warrantable unless there's something else obvious going on.

Some dealers that mention mods are ok will actually try and buy you out of the car at the end of the lease instead of terminating it - lower mileage cars can sometimes beat the residual and we can make an extra buck out of it. They may not even get returned to TFS at all.

Pretty much spot on. :thumbsup:

I am leasing mine and my mods so far are SRT headerback, Beat Sonic shark fin, and Visconti tune. Dealerships want the cars as stock as possible because mods, especially cosmetic ones, are very subjective. Mods can sometimes narrow the number of people that would consider purchasing a used vehicle so if it's bone stock, it's better merchandise. You can then sell your parts in a forum such as this or craigslist, etc.

As far as the two years of maintenance being included, it's not so the dealership can "snoop" around to see what you did to the car and find a reason to void your warranty. The reason Toyota started this is because of the floor mat/sticky pedal recalls of 2010. The way they see it is that if they give you free maintenance, it will give you the customer 5 times to bring something up to the service department that may be bothering you. How many times have something happened to or with your car and you said to yourself, "oh, I'll tell them the next time I am in for service" and then you forget or never return for service. Well, if you are getting it for free, it will increase the likelihood of you bringing the car to the dealership for servicing.

Scion Maintenance Schedule

If you see on page 38, Inspect driver's side floor mat is marked with an "I" for each one. Our advisers usually check this right away when the customer pulls the car into the service drive. The "record" for our dealership was 4 floor mats piled up on the driver's side. We have pulled out beach towels, door mats (like a welcome mat at the front door of your house), cardboard, over-sized Wally World mats that are "universal fit" and could cover the entire trunk area if necessary, wood paneling, blankets and probably some other things that I haven't personally witnessed in the 11 years of working at my dealership. I haven't actually tracked or logged any stats on this but I would bet money on that 30-40% of the cars we see, trade appraisals, service cars etc, still have incorrect or incorrectly installed mats on the driver's side and usually the passenger side too, but the driver's side is more important.

Now are the service advisers going to try and up-sell you during these services? Probably, it's their job to sell you on different items/services. A good service adviser isn't going to try and sell you something that is unreasonable like a trans flush at 7500 miles and tell you that if you don't do it your warranty is void. Now if you bring your car in all "hella flush", they are probably going to note it in their system in case any suspension issues pop up in the future. Use common sense. Don't bring a force fed 86 in drinking the corn for an oil change and then if the motor goes boom expect it to be covered under warranty.

Ruskymx

I'm leasing. And I've got a tune, CAI, and springs and wheels and tires. And more to come.


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Thanks everyone this is very helpful. I will start designing a ful exhaust system now. Just got my new 2year lease ashphalt. Cant wait to mod. Can they tell if you change the ecu like a visconti tune??


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really? Very simple.......things that bolt on, also bolt off.....

Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. It's basically calculating in the depreciation of the car over the lease term, and essentially that is what you pay for. Instead of trading it in at the dealer for money towards a new car, you just paid less for it all along.

So, you pay $25k for an FR-S. Totally financed, it would be $417/mo at 0% interest for 5 years. If you want a new car in 3 years, then at that point you've paid $15,000 for the car. The dealer is going to give you $20,000 for the trade-in, and you pay off the remaining $10,000 on the loan.

A lease would take into account that the car is coming back to the dealer, and they are going to give you $20,000 for it after 3 years, so what you're actually "financing" is $5,000 over 3 years, which would be $139/mo (again at a ficticious 0%).

After 3 years you are in the exact same place on what you've paid for the car, but with the lease it was pre-factored in. That's the basic idea. In reality, you will probably pay out more for a lease than if you bought the car and sold it on your own after a few years, but it isn't too rare for the lease to work out in your favor either.