A4Driver

My lease expires in April, but my dealership over the last month or so has been pressuring me to trade my car in. Here is an email I received from the general sales manager today:

Dear (Me).
Make a statement for the holidays and upgrade to a new Audi A4 2.0T Premium Plus quattro during the Season of Audi Sales Event.
We've reviewed the vehicle records of your 2017 Audi A4 2.0T Premium Plus TSFI quattro, Vin WAUENXXXXXXXXXXXX and discovered that due to our December programs, you can upgrade to a new 2018 Audi A42.0T Premium Plus quattro under unprecedented conditions.*
Upgrade to a brand new 2018 A4 2.0T Premium Plus quattro this month to receive:

• Your lease disposition fee waived
• $6,502 credit toward your new Audi
• A new 4-year/50,000-mile limited warranty*

Now is the time to experience the benefits of the Season of Audi Sales Event. This is a limited-time offer, so be sure to stop by (the dealership) before December 31.
(Signed)(General Sales Manager)
Combined incentives result in an agree upon vehicle value of $43,534 ($50,036 MSRP less $6,502 incentive). Offer for new vehicle expires Dec. 31, 2018

Personally, I don't see any benefits of getting a one-year-newer model year A4 after owning mine for almost 3 years, with the exception of getting a new warranty & Audi Care. Not enough has changed in the car to make me want my monthly payments to go up.
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A4Nash

It's that time of the year where they start e-mailing everyone to try and get them into the end-of-year models, whether they are leased, financed, or owned outright. Just got mine today too with a low-ball trade in offer for my 2017, and meager incentive discount. Like you, I have had mine for the better part of three years and have low mileage of 16,500. Not a chance I would jump at this. Might work for some folks though

JD15

In most of these deals, you may get a decent price on the new car but will get killed on your trade in. Such deals are not in your interest unless you want give the sales manager at your local dealer a nice Christmas present.

VM

My dad was once offered this kind of thing by an Acura dealer - 'oh we can get you into a new car for the same monthly payment as your existing lease on your existing car one.'

I did a little research, and in my view there was about a $6000 gap between the price to buy out the car at that time and its value on the used market.

So, when you looked at the numbers, they were rolling the 'missing' $6000 into the lease on the new car... but because the manufacturer incentives were much greater (including a rate reduction for loyalty), they were able to roll that $6000 in and still keep the monthly payment around the same as on the old car.

Q5 Bob

I got a similar letter last week only this letter was for my A6 and getting me into a new gen 2019 A6 "under unprecedented conditions". Same wording as the OP's. I think it's probably just a corporate format for the dealers to use on various models.

The "offer" in my letter showed BlackBook on the A6 (although they have no idea of the mileage/condition) less MRSP on the new one - Nothing else. A waste of time, paper and mailing cost.

ScoobaBlue

This is basically the iPhone trade in program people do every year. They want the newest model and trade in their phone for far less than it's worth while keeping the monthly payment the same. It's just math and people are just lazy. They're losing money but because the money coming out of their pocket each month doesn't change much, they just shrug it off and move on