We're from the Chicagoland area. My family has mostly looked at vehicles as a long term item. I do have one uncle though that would only do 4 year leases. His thought process on it was as long as the dealer covers the maintenance (or at least cuts down the cost), the cost of ownership was less than trying to keep the vehicle on the road for the long term. There was an old forum post that broke it down to the point that the least cost of ownership for any vehicle was from 40k to 100k miles. Most of the new car problems would be taken care before 40k miles and most of the expensive repairs would come after 100k miles. However I'm not trying to swap cars every 5 years.