Tips on Buying Cars: lease, saturn sl, lease car

Question
Jeff  I recently did a lease of a toyota for 3 years at 15k per year, i was wandering what if say i get 45000 miles on the car before the 36 months is up, can i just take the car back to the dealer and pay whatever is left on the lease term and just walk away at the rate im driving now i think i will hit the 45k in about 2 years, if i cant do that then i was just going to buy a low priced used car to keep the miles down on the toyota,  i dont really think i want to buy it, im not a big toyota fan, but with the way things were with GM i was very leary to go new with them with all there troubles.  Thanks alot.  Mark

Answer
First, my apologies for taking so long to reply, but I've been unable to log into the alexperts site since just before the holidays.  If you read the fine print of the contract, you'll see that you were really allowed 1,250 miles per month, and not a total of 45,000 miles.  If you turn in the vehicle early, you'll be charged for excess miles (about 15,000 excess miles at the end of two years, if you had 45,000 miles on the car at that point).  I often suggest the very idea you've come up with already for someone in your situation:  pick up a cheap used car you can use to keep the miles down on the lease car.  Something in the $1500-$3000 range, with a good reputation (Civic/ Corolla/ Escort/ Saturn SL, etc...) will have very little depreciation over the next year or so, which means you could most likely resell it for close to what you paid for it.