It actually took me a bit to break out of the lease cycle; I leased a nice-but-not-ostentatious Volkswagen right out of school that was quite a bit more than 10% of my take-home. Hedonic treadmilling what it is I wanted to buy something but didn't want to "downgrade" and ended up going through another 3 or 4 leases before I had finally saved up enough to buy something used outright at the end of a lease. And what would you know, because I wasn't leasing something I had all these termination fees I had never had before, pushing $1500.

It's easy to see how if you don't have the income to save and a cheap car lease is already pushing your budget you would get locked into not only leasing, but basically leasing from the same manufacturer or close competitors time and again.