In the summer of 2015 I pulled the plug, got in touch with a guy that wanted to transfer his lease (through swapalease or leasetrader) and ended up taking over a manual 2013 ZCP with 16K miles and all the nice packages. My monthly was $800+ and the residual was 42K.
In 2016 right when the lease is about to expire and I'm about to acquire the vehicle the Takata airbag fiasco hits and BMW would not sell me the car but it did cut me a deal and extended my lease for a year while reducing my monthly to $600 and the residual to $32K.
At the beginning of 2017 I call BMW of NA and ask for an expedite resolution of the airbag issue due to my intentions of purchasing the vehicle and in 2 weeks time they ship the unit to a local dealer and my car gets fixed.
Last month when I go to the said dealer they quote me
$42,729: 33,975 for the car + 875 random charge + 3995 CPO for 2 years + 3885 taxes. I was a bit astonished given that for an unknown reason they were charging me 2K over the base price, and also it seemed that they screwed up on the taxes.
Long story short I purchased the car directly from BMW of NA bypassing the dealer for $32,0000 including taxes and added the Fidelity Platinum coverage for any type of breakdowns the cost of which was $2,500 for 2 years, for a total of
$34,500 and saving 8K in the process as compared to the dealership.
Sidenotes:
* I'm not super clear why the difference in price+tax was so big, but even if the dealership screwed up in their calculations the difference in the base price alone + random charges was 2K!! I'm in California btw.
* The dealership did offer better financing terms, when combined with CPO they offered 1.9APR compared to 4.0 from BMW of NA.