Exceeding your allotted lease mileage happens, and dealers know it; that’s why the limits exist in the first place, and many of us wind up paying a couple hundred or possibly even a couple grand to the tune of a quarter per mile. But your worst underestimation has nothing on this lessee of a 2023 Toyota Camry in Wisconsin, who logged an average of 76,650 miles each of the three years they owned the car, and returned it to the dealer with an odometer that read 223,036 miles.
Shout out to The Drive reader Jacob, who sent us a link to the sedan at Smart Toyota of Madison, Wisconsin, now listed for $15,000. Jacob says he was casually browsing the dealer’s used inventory when the Camry caught his eye. It’s an SE model, the second rung up the Camry ladder, meaning that it would’ve cost at least $29,000 new, excluding optional extras. Our fascinating mystery customer leased it, then proceeded to add something like 215 miles to it daily.
The CarFax reveals a stunning story in dates. One month into their lease, this individual logged 5,400 miles. A whopping nine days later, they were already at their 10,000-mile service. This Camry was averaging two services a month and, given that, you’d expect the vehicle to have quite a few battle scars upon its return to Smart Toyota. Yet, somehow, its only truly obvious flaw is a scuff on the passenger side of the front bumper, which happened after a sideswipe incident about two months in.
The driver’s seat, as Jacob noted to us, seems pristine. Either this person never snacked during their daily 200-mile journeys, or the Smart Toyota cleaning crew works miracles.
Actually, you could probably chalk it up to a little of both. A dealer representative told The Drive that the previous owner used the car for Uber and Lyft. Makes sense, but even then, those were assuredly some long fares.
“You know how hard it is to put that kind of mileage on an Uber car?” Tony Thorstad, Smart Toyota’s Marketing Specialist, told us over the phone. “If you’re in Madison, Wisconsin, good luck driving 100 miles a day because it’s around town, you know? They’re all short trips, so he must have been someplace where he had to take long Uber trips.”
As for how this ended, the customer effectively bought out the Camry and sold it back to the dealer. In fact, considering how much they used the car, the rideshare driver made out fairly decently.
“After the lease, there’s a buyout at the end—regardless of the mileage, the buyout’s the buyout. And we made him an offer that was $3,000 less than the buyout. He wrote a check [for $3,000] and walked away.”
We couldn’t get specifics on the buyout price—that information is private—but this dealer will lease at up to 20,000 miles a year. Purely speculating, if you suppose 25 cents for every mile over that, and a 60,000-mile max over three years, this individual may have been facing a penalty on the order of $40,000 when all was said and done. That sounds hopeless, but that’s why buyouts are always an option, and why the lessee here pretty much had no choice but to take it. They could’ve even rolled it into another Camry if they wanted to, considering this one served them so well.
Got any wild dealership or used car stories, on either side of the desk? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com
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