My current BMW got a free SATNAV package purely because it increases the residuals so much.

One very important thing.

Take out lease GAP insurance. This isn’t a recommendation, it is essential.

When I was given my lease car Citroen also gave me an invoice receipt for the full price of the car+ extras. If I crashed the car say with a few months my insurer would have paid out the market rate. The lease company would look to recover from you the price they value the car at. Thats a big gap to factor into your budget.

If you have a lease car currently without GAP- seriously get it now. Don’t chance it.

http://www.whatcar.com/car-leasing/car-leasing-guide/gap-insurance.php

If you want a specific model, then leasing can be expensive. In this case, look around and see if there is a deal available somewhere. Also worth noting that some deals are business only.

If you are flexible with make/model, then you can get really good deals.

I’d agree with that. Sometimes the lease/finance deals can be heavily manufacturer subsidised. BMW sometimes do effectively half price lease deals on certain models to get them rolling. A client of mine is the DP at a BMW franchise and is always trying to get me into one. But still prefer to buy cars outright in general and have done with the last few.

But it was a discounted model £16000 to spec it up – I paid £12500 with 6% from a dealer.

So presumably if you had paid off the finance instantly, you would have saved 6% pa. Or are you getting >6% interest in your bank account? If the latter please point me in the direction of your bank so I can move all our savings there.

some examples here of ‘special’ lease deals to give an idea
http://www.dsgauto.com/car_leasing-special-offers.html

Should retail at 12.5 k so I will have a bit of equity in the car as opposed to nothing If I lease

Retail price is a lot different to trade in price. Are you sure you’d have that kind of equity?

I’ve been keeping an eye on PH thread:

PistonHeads: Best Lease Car Deals Available

There seems to be a lot of cheap Golf R’s on lease.