I just looked for a friend as to what a 2009 JCW would cost to lease. When I leased mine last August, I had a residual of 66% for 15k miles/year on a 3 year lease. Today, that number is 53%. I re-ran the calculations and that would have bumped my payment from $397/month to $530/month

Craziness...

 

Couple of reasons for that; it's the very end of the '09s-dealers are accepting orders for '10s-so traditionally resids drop. And with the economy still in the tank, all financial institutes are being overly conservative with leasing.

Consider the '09 JCW Clubman at my local dealer. They're running a MINI Select offer on it. Sticker is $38k, and with $5k down, 399 a month for 36 months and a $15k balloon at the end, the total paid would be $34400, which is below the invoice price and obviously there are some finance charges incurred by them on this as well.....but they don't have to worry about unloading the car at the end.

The current lease deals on MCs are showing a pretty strong resid though, so another part of it is better resale values on the lower priced models and stripped MCSs, something that has always been true....