Some good responses so far. Rooskibar probably has the best advice since he is in the business on some higher end vehicles. I'll toss my two cents in anyways.

If you plan on buying the vehicle outright and having it for the next ten years or more, probably best not to lease. In the end you'll end up paying more than if you just bought the damn thing.

Leasing can get you into a pretty nice vehicle for a reasonable amount of money. And if you are the type of guy who wants to drive a new vehicle every few years then leasing makes more sense to me than buying.

When I met my wife she had a car that was leased. The monthly payments were cheap. About three months before the lease was up, she was in an accident that did $13,000 worth of damage. When the lease was up we turned it in and walked away.

Most of our vehicles have been purchased brand new and financed. We usually pay them off early and then drive them for a couple of years after that and then buy another one.

My most recent vehicle was bought used. I'm thinking this might be the way I go from now on. The original sticker price on the one I bought was $42,000 and I got it four years later for $20,000. It has all the bells and whistles and was just about as clean as a new one and I got it for less than half of what the original owner paid for it.

I was in your shoes. My last truck was in pretty decent shape but was 15 years old and was about to need tires and some front end work. I could have dumped a couple of thousand dollars into it and made it all good but then I'd still have an old, outdated, 200,000 mile truck that I just put more money into than it was worth.