Motor Mouth: Why Nissan’s so keen to sell low-mile leases

Nissan USA just this week offered up the industry’s latest twist in automotive affordability plans. It’s called SignatureFlex. For all the company’s talk of “flexibility” and “data-driven demand,” it is, for lack of a better definition, basically an ultra-low-mileage lease program. Sign up for a Pathfinder, Rogue, or Rogue Sport (a.k.a. the Qashqai, here in the Great White Frozen North) and, as long as you’re willing to limit your driving to 5,000 miles per annum, has Nissan got a deal for you.

According to Jim Trude, vice-president of Nissan Motor Acceptance Co (NMAC), the company’s research reveals consumers want these lower-mileage leases. Last year, his company introduced 10,000-mile leases — down from the normal 12,000 miles — and they’re already, according to Automotive News, the most popular option for Nissan’s new-car hires. The new SignatureFlex program would require limiting yourself to just 640 kilometres a month.

Now as any lessee can attest, the penalty for going over your proscribed mileage limit is pretty punitive. Legion are the owners of high-mileage leased cars panicked into parking their cars in the last few months of their about-to-expire contract. Here, too, Nissan has a solution, offering you the “flexibility” to change your lease limits mid-way through the deal. NMAC will even offer to monitor your mileage — oh, joy, even more surveillance of your every mile — so they can predict when you might need to extend you lease limit.

Except that in doing so you’re forgetting the first maxim of the automobile purchase process, namely that dealers always make their money before you save yours. Or, as my all-time favourite automotive-industry meme goes, “We cheat the other guy and pass the savings along to you.”