Yes, if you're going to cash buy, you can frequently get a better deal off the sticker price by agreeing to finance and then simply paying the loan off. How you structure things really depends on priorities though. Normally I buy the car (through financing) but right now I prioritized low monthly payments during financial uncertainty, so I leased. If things are different in three years, we'll either buy a new car or buyout the lease-- I made sure the lease buyout price was something we would be comfortable with: the TCO came out to only a little more than if we financed a purchase w/ higher immediate monthly payments, and I judged that a slightly higher TCO is worth the current ability to keep monthly expenses to a minimum.