lease was up so i bought a repo Escalade instead, 2020 Premium Luxury, the numbers

you just did the single best money move available to a serial lessee and i want to make sure you see how big it is, because people who lease luxury trucks for a living rarely stop to add it up.

twelve years of luxury SUV leases at, call it conservatively, 900 a month, is six figures of payments for which you own nothing today. buying a 44,200 repo that already took its depreciation cliff, with your own money, breaks the cycle. the 2020 will keep depreciating but gently now, you are past the steep part, and the day you are done with it you sell a thing you own instead of handing the keys back and starting the meter again.

the 6.2 will drink and the repairs are now yours, so fund them, but the structure of this purchase is just correct.

so you are the Escalade. i bid on a 2020 Premium Luxury through the same auction in october and lost it by an amount i will never know, then bought a Navigator instead and could not be happier, so if that was your truck, thank you for taking it off my hands and freeing me up for the Lincoln.

same route you took, repo, sealed bid, own financing first. it is a strange way to buy a 45,000 dollar vehicle and it keeps working out for the people on this board who go in with their eyes open. waiting on your numbers.

the one maintenance flag on the 6.2 before you fall in love. the active fuel management, the cylinder deactivation, has a history of lifter trouble on the corporate V8s if the oil changes were ever stretched, and a repo has unknown oil history by definition. it is not a given and plenty go 200k, but it is the thing to watch and the reason to change the oil now and run it on time forever.

some owners disable the cylinder deactivation with a tune or a device for exactly this reason. i would at minimum get fresh oil in it this week and listen for a lifter tick on a warm idle. if it is quiet you very likely have a good one.

the awkward questions guy again. snowbird use is its own thing and i have opinions since my parents do the Greenwich to Naples run every year.

a truck that lives half the year in Arizona desert heat and half in storage cooks its tires and its battery and dries out every seal faster than a salt belt truck rusts. check the tire date codes, desert tires age out before they wear out, and i would not trust a battery of unknown age on a repo. these are cheap things but they are the things that leave you stranded in a parking lot in july. what did the listing show you on tires and did you get two keys.

moving this one thought to the top since it keeps coming up across the buy board: the repo route works for the people who line up their own money before they bid and go in having read what breaks. it does not work for people who bid on a feeling and sort out the financing after. you did it in the right order.

leaving the thread open for your numbers. and welcome, a serial lessee who broke the cycle is exactly the before and after this board is good for.

numbers, 30 days in. the win was 44,200, Arizona tax and title near 3,500, and 540 of transport for the stretch beyond the free thousand miles, landing me all in at 48,240 on something that stickered in the low 80s new. my last lease would have cost me more than that over its own term and left me owning nothing.

first month. gx460_reliable was right to flag the lifters, so the first thing i did was an oil change and a long warm idle with my ear on the valve covers, dead quiet, no tick, i got a good one. the tire date codes were four years old with plenty of tread, desert aging exactly like grand_wagoneer_owner warned, so i replaced all four for peace of mind, 1,500, and that is the one real cost of the first month. two keys came with it, which was a nice surprise after reading the Navigator thread. the AC blew cold the first 108 degree day, which in Scottsdale is the only spec that truly matters.

the honest limitation this board asks for: a repo comes with no seller financing, so i had my own loan lined up ahead of any bid, and when i asked for extra undercarriage shots the reply took three days, which drags when you are sitting on a wire decision. the photos were good when they came. i would buy this way again and probably will next time instead of ever leasing again.