Last Updated: Feb. 02, 2010

If you’re looking for a new car but can’t seem to commit for the long haul, then leasing makes perfect sense for you. To help you shop, we’ve compiled some of the best lease deals for February. If you don’t see one that works for you, contact a dealer to see what leases they can offer you. At this time of year, they should be flexible to win your business.

Now is a smart time to consider buying or leasing a car. Winter is a slow period for car sales, and dealers are looking to move cars any way they can. In addition to reviewing the best lease deals that carmakers are offering, you may want to check out this month’s best car deals for cash back and financing offers. Here are the top lease offers:

Toyota. Toyota runs all specials by region, and it gets quirky. We recommend that you contact local Toyota dealers to see what incentives are available in your area. Editor’s note: Toyota has suspended selling several models, including the popular Camry and Corolla, until it has solved the gas pedal safety concern with these vehicles. We will update our lease deals information once these vehicles are again safe to purchase and drive.

Honda. If your budget caps at $200 per month, Honda has several good options right now. These include a $179 per month lease on the popular Civic LX model and $199 for either the Insight hybrid or the Accord sedan. As with last month, a bare-bones Civic DX-VP model is yours for only $159 per month (details below).

BMW. BMW is offering 2010 3-Series and 1-Series leases for under $400.

GM: General Motors is offering a number of low-mileage leases on its up-market Buick and Cadillac brands. While mileage is limited to about 1,000 miles per month on these leases, the payments are pretty limited as well. The well-reviewed Cadillac SRX is available for $479 a month for 39 months. Also, if you’re a current Toyota lessee, GM is offering up to $1,000 to help you end that lease early and take a new GM lease.

The Honda Insight, a new family-sized hybrid that is already providing stiff competition for the ubiquitous Toyota Prius, has been named Green Car of the Year 2009 by the Environmental Transport Association (ETA).

The least green car was found to be the 8-litre Dodge SRT-10 sports car. A year’s driving in the Dodge emits the same amount of CO2 as is absorbed by 322 mature trees – the equivalent of an acre of oak forest. *

The ETA examined over 1300 models of car currently on sale in Britain and compared their power, emissions, fuel efficiency and even the amount of noise they produce to create a definitive guide to buying the greenest vehicle.

A fully searchable database of the results will be published at www.greencarawards.co.uk on Wednesday 17th June 2009.

Green Transport Week is (13th – 21st June 2009)

All American Insurance owner Chris Pringle has been in the business for 16 years and says about 15 to 20% of his clients have dropped their car insurance or have let their payments slide.

“It’s been a shock. I thought we were somewhat in a recession-proof business because it’s required for everyone to have,” Pringle said.

Little Rock Police say uninsured drivers are an ongoing issue for the department. So far this year they’ve issued 713 tickets for no proof of insurance. This time last year they had issued 720.

“That’s only the people we’ve caught. A lot of people who drive without insurance we don’t catch because a lot of times they don’t violate any other law. There’s nothing on your vehicle that says ‘I don’t have insurance,’” Lt. Terry Hastings said.

Hastings says those trying to pinch pennies could end up costing you in higher premiums.

“It’s really unfair to the person involved in an accident. You have insurance to protect you from civil liability. That leaves a person who wasn’t at fault holding the bag, you might say,” he said.

Pringle’s clients who are trying to save money to put food on the table are affecting Pringle’s ability to do the same.

“I think ‘08 snuck up on a lot of people. I think as we closed out the numbers, it shocked a lot of people that we were down 25 to 28%,” he said.

Pringle said that many of his clients are shopping around for better rates to save money and many are also adding uninsured motorist coverage. He said insurance carriers are required to report to the state the VIN numbers of vehicles when the owners fail to make insurance payments for three consecutive months. However, he said many of his clients will let their payments slide for a month or two, then pick back up again to avoid having their car reported to the state.

DETROIT (Reuters) - The heads of two U.S. auto dealership associations said on Tuesday that swift government action is needed to improve access to floorplan financing — which funds inventory purchases — for their members or more dealers will go bankrupt.

“If we don’t fix this wholesale credit issue, this whole thing (the auto industry) collapses,” John McEleney, chairman of the National Auto Dealers Association, told Reuters in a telephone interview. “Every week there are more dealers that are being impacted and going out of business.”

U.S. car dealers have to pay for a new car on delivery, a process traditionally funded through floorplan financing. But such financing has dried up in recent months with the credit crunch.

McEleney said the NADA had hoped the Federal Reserve’s Term Asset-backed Loan Facility — which will provide $200 billion to finance new debt backed by auto, credit card, student and small business loans — would help floorplan financing. But rating agency downgrades for auto finance companies like GMAC LLC (GKM.N) have cut off access to TALF funds.

“The floorplan financing problem affects everyone,” McEleney said. “When we lose that, there’s nowhere else to go.”

The NADA represents 20,000 U.S. car and truck dealers nationwide. Thanks to a protracted slump in the U.S. auto industry — industrywide sales fell nearly 40 percent in the first two months of the year to their lowest level in 27 years — the NADA expects 1,200 dealerships will go out of business in 2009, up from 900 in 2008.

“If we don’t get the financing issue resolved by the second half of the year that number could be higher than 1,200,” McEleney said.

Just in January, the NADA was projecting that 900 dealerships would close this year.

‘NO SOLUTION YET’

Earlier this month the heads of the NADA, the American International Auto Dealers Association and the National Association of Minority Auto Dealers called on U.S. President Barack Obama to improve funding for floorplan financing.

Auto dealers have shed some 50,000 jobs over the past 12 to 14 months and are “collectively at risk for approximately $100 billion in inventory financing,” the letter said.

“We must have floorplan financing to finance inventory,” AIADA Chairman Russ Darrow told Reuters. “This isn’t about domestic automakers or imports.”

“This is a huge problem spread out across little and large communities across the country,” he added.

The AIADA represents 11,000 dealerships for foreign-based brands such Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) and Volkswagen AG (VOWG.DE).

The NADA’s McEleney said the three groups have met with officials from the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve and U.S. government autos task force, and are to meet Federal Reserve Bank of New York officials this week to press their case.

SCION

By TOM KRISHER and KEN THOMAS

DETROIT (AP) — Even by the standards of battered automakers, Chrysler is in dire shape.

Its sales in December were down a stunning 53 percent, far worse than Ford or General Motors, and analysts say it probably won’t survive the year as an independent company — despite $4 billion in government loans and the possibility of more.

Things were so bad last year that a single Toyota model, the Camry/Solara midsize car, outsold the entire fleet of Chrysler LLC’s passenger cars.

“Basically they’re done,” said Aaron Bragman, an auto analyst with the consulting company IHS Global Insight in Troy, Mich. “There is no real possibility of turning this thing around as an independent company in my opinion.”

U.S. sales of Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep brand vehicles fell 30 percent last year, the worst decline of any major automaker. It lost more market share than any of its peers, down to 11 percent. Analysts say most of Chrysler’s products, especially its cars, don’t look, feel or drive as well as the competition’s.

Chrysler plans to introduce an electric car in 2010, but until then, there are few promising models to boost sales. Many analysts predict that by 2010, Chrysler will be acquired by another automaker or sold in pieces by its majority owner, New York private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management.

Chrysler’s chief financial officer has said the company needs $7 billion every 45 days to pay parts suppliers, and analysts question whether the company’s meager sales are generating enough cash to make those payments.

Analysts also say an acquisition by General Motors Corp. is still possible. The two companies discussed it late last year before GM backed away to focus on its own cash issues.

Nissan Motor Co. could be interested in buying Chrysler’s truck business. Chrysler is already signed up to make pickup trucks for the Japanese company.

Jonathan Macey, a Yale University law professor who has been critical of U.S. automakers’ management, said Chrysler’s sales numbers are “further evidence of an unviable entity.”

When automakers went to Washington late last year, their aim was to get enough money to become viable again. They wound up with only enough help from the Bush administration to get them through March, when Barack Obama will be in office and might provide more aid.

Macey said giving the carmakers any money is burning cash.

“I’m a big fan of not throwing good money after bad,” he said. “The idea that you would enter into a financing relationship like this without any parameters is more evidence of the complete insanity of all this.”

A Treasury Department spokeswoman noted that the agreement for the government’s automaker loans required that the administration designate someone to keep analyzing the companies’ finances and viability.

Macey, author of a book on corporate governance, said it’s too late for Chrysler and GM to solve their problems, including high labor costs and union work rules that hinder competitiveness.

To get the loans, GM and Chrysler had to agree to negotiate concessions from creditors and the United Auto Workers union, but the specifics have yet to be worked out. The government can call in the loans March 31.

Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli, in a presentation to the Senate Banking Committee last month, said the company could stay alive in the long term with reasonable concessions, a $7 billion bridge loan and $6 billion more out of the $25 billion Congress allocated to develop new fuel-efficient technology.

The Bush administration provided a $4 billion loan. Now, Chrysler is counting on an additional $3 billion in aid for its financing arm, Chrysler Financial.

Some lawmakers say automakers need time to wring out the concessions, and point out that the recession and nearly frozen credit markets are at least partly to blame for poor sales.

“You could make a car that could run on air or could fly and people wouldn’t buy it,” said Senate Banking Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. “I’m hoping that we may see some of that investor consumer confidence come back.”

Chrysler, based in Auburn Hills, Mich., and Ford Motor Co., in nearby Dearborn, are also waiting on a decision from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on whether they can become industrial loan corporations. That would mean the government could guarantee their debt, making it more appealing to investors, whose cash Chrysler could use to make more car loans at better terms.

Some lawmakers have noted that foreign automakers, including Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp. and Germany’s BMW AG, have the industrial banks, placing the domestic auto industry at a disadvantage.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., whose state is home to Chrysler, GM and Ford, said much will depend on how the Obama administration executes the terms of the auto bailout.

In his presentation to Congress, Nardelli used charts that showed Chrysler could post an operating profit of $400 million this year if Americans buy about 11 million light vehicles overall. But in this economy, analysts predict the figure will come in smaller.

Nardelli said Chrysler will improve fuel economy on 19 models this year, about three-quarters of its product line. Besides the electric car, it also has a deal with Nissan to produce a Chrysler subcompact in 2010.

Last month, Chrysler showed off prototypes of a new 300 sedan, Charger performance car and Jeep Grand Cherokee, as well as new, more luxurious interiors under development for nearly all of its products.

The problem, says Bragman, is that significant new products don’t arrive for another year. And Chrysler may not make it until then.

“The good stuff doesn’t come in time,” Bragman said. “They don’t have any help coming really for 2009.”

Associated Press Writer Ken Thomas reported from Washington. AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger in Washington also contributed to this report.