For fun, Becky and I went to Maxwell Nissan to test drive a Murano.  I don't know why all the pictures are that nasty orange.  It looks much better in the silver or blue.  I've been itching to drive a car with variable transmission ever since I heard of a commercial implementation about 10 years ago.  I was very impressed with the transmission, which was well under 2000rpm at 65mph.  It leverages that technology to get fantastic mileage on an SUV.  The whole thing was pretty sweet.  Our salesperson, we'll call him "Ben" (because that was his name), said, "If you can feel it shift, I'll buy the car for you".  I found that to be only slightly amusing since it's impossible for the car to shift at all.

While we cannot afford the vehicle, they did set forth some interesting numbers on a lease.  With our Explorer not worth much on a trade-in, leasing seems like an interesting option.  I've heard it put, "just like buying a used car, you're paying for half of the car, but you get the new half."  Any opinions?

Just curious what experiences people have had with leasing.  I've heard some horror stories, that I mentioned to the sales-person.  They had pretty convincing rebuttals (rebuttals?  is that right?).  Tell me what you think.