When I bought my car, the salesman said that if I bought my car at the end of the lease, then likely the dealer would make it a CPO car and extend the warranty to 6/100. Now I don't generally believe salesman but it makes some sense. They generally auction the car off for less than the residual so there is a loss there. If I buy it, they get the full residual. I would expect that the resale value of a 545 has taken more of a hit then predicted b/c of 550, facelift, higher gas prices etc. - that would make selling to me even more attractive.

FWIW - I will have about 45k miles at 3 years which I would also think would make it a bit harder to sell and I have a lot of options that generally lose resale value faster (but BMW doesn't change the residual percentage). I think my residual is $42k.

I think - someone correct me if I am wrong - that my residual will go down to $40k once I pay the mileage charge. I know that you can get a discount on mileage by prepaying it which you can do until the last 4 months of the lease. The lease ends in October so the resale value will fall some more.

The more I think about this, I am not too sure that a 2005 545 with 45k miles is worth $40k.