He said Lexus wants each customer to pay about the same price for one of the 500 LFA units, which will be powered by a 552-hp, 4.8-liter 10-cylinder engine. Once the two-year lease is up, customers can opt to buy the cars.
"If someone buys it the first month and then decides to sell it, that could be damaging for the ownership experience," Smith said. "If it is not controlled and hits the speculation market, all bets are off."
However, you can order the car exactly the way you want it and it will not be built until "bought."
"You can personalize it right down to the stitching in the car," Smith said.
Special factory trained technicians will handle service. Lexus dealers will not have to buy any special tools or hire the techs, Lexus will handle it all.
It will be interesting to see how the market plays out after two years. Lexus talks about specialty cars like theirs ending up in museums and not being driven. I don't see how a lease with option to buy is going to change that. Ok, you can't trade it for two years. But you can still park it, wait out the two years and let the gambling begin. It looks like dealer markup will be the only thing that suffers. And in this market, that will be enough to piss some of them way off.
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