Depreciation and repair risk trade against each other. The cheaper the car, the less value it can lose — and the more of your cost arrives as unpredictable repair bills. Pick the risk you can absorb.

Every route above except one needs a lender, an underwriter or a platform to say yes first, and they all read a US credit file you do not have yet. Arriving with a clean record from another country counts for nothing — the file is empty, not good.

Georgia gives you 30 days from becoming a resident to hold a Georgia licence. A non-citizen establishing residency is on the same clock.

• Georgia does not charge sales tax on cars at all. It charges a one-time Title Ad Valorem Tax of 7% instead, paid when the vehicle is titled, which replaced both sales tax and the old annual ad valorem bill. Three consequences worth money: a new resident titling a car they already own pays 3%, not 7%, so bringing a car with you is taxed at half rate; a private-party purchase is taxed on the state's own fair-market-value manual, not your bill of sale, so haggling a cheap price does not cut the tax; and the trade-in deduction only applies at a licensed dealer, never on a private sale. Outside Georgia, ordinary sales tax applies — on the full price when buying, and in most states only on each monthly payment when leasing, though Texas and Illinois tax the whole vehicle up front even on a lease. Enter your lease payment tax-inclusive either way.
• Cash gets you no discount at the dealer. Dealers earn on financing, so paying cash can cost you the promotional APR and any finance rebate. Negotiate the out-the-door price first, reveal how you are paying last, then check whether a 0.9–2.9% promo loan beats your cash return.
• Leases are mileage-metered. Go over the allowance and you pay $0.15–$0.30 per mile at turn-in, plus wear-and-tear charges for anything past "normal". High-mileage drivers rarely win on a lease.
• You cannot walk out of a lease cheaply. Early termination bills the remaining payments; a transfer (Swapalease and friends) is the usual escape hatch, and some captives ban it. A month-to-month subscription is the option you can actually cancel.
• Gap coverage. With little or no money down, a loan can be underwater for the first year or two — gap insurance covers the difference if the car is totalled. Leases usually include it.
• Insurance is not equal, and a new car is the expensive end of it. Cover is priced off the payout, so the newer and pricier the car the higher the premium — and sensor-laden bumpers and windscreens have pushed repair costs up faster than the cars themselves. Leases and loans then require comprehensive and collision with set deductibles for the whole term, so the one lever that would cut the bill is contractually closed to you; on an owned older car you can drop that coverage and self-insure. Subscriptions include insurance in the rate, which is a real part of why a $1,000/mo subscription is not as far above a $873 lease as it looks — get a quote on the actual VIN before you sign either, because a lease payment and a subscription rate are not comparable numbers until you have added it.
• Business use. If the car runs through a business, lease payments and depreciation deduct differently (Section 179 / bonus depreciation vs. the lease inclusion amount). That can flip the ranking, and it is a question for a CPA, not a calculator.

Every default below is a published US figure, not a guess. They are national averages — your state, credit score and driving record will move them, so overwrite anything you know better.

• Depreciation — five-year retention per model from the iSeeCars 2026 study: RAV4 75%, CR-V 71%, CX-5 58%, X3 ~50%, Equinox 49%, Escape 46%, against an all-vehicle average of 58%. The generic slow/average/fast curves are calibrated to the same scale.
• APR — Experian's State of the Automotive Finance Market, Q1 2026: 6.39% average on new, 11.43% on used.
• Lease payment — the $500 default is what standard lease maths gives for a $32k car at a 60% residual over 36 months. Experian puts the national average new-car lease payment at $619/mo, on a much pricier average car.
• Insurance — ~$210/mo for full coverage, the middle of 2026 national estimates (sources range $186–$244). That figure is the new-car anchor, and the age chips scale it down from there — ×0.92 at three years, ×0.80 at five to seven, ×0.62 at ten-plus — because comprehensive and collision are priced off the payout, which falls with the car's value. Marque moves it too: German luxury runs ×1.35, American ×1.05. So the same driver insuring a new German saloon and a ten-year-old Honda is looking at roughly $285 against $130 a month, on identical liability limits.
• Maintenance and repairs — ten-year brand totals from YourMechanic: Toyota $5,445, Honda $5,835, Chevrolet $6,275, Ford $6,350, Mazda $6,420, against $14,000–19,000 for German luxury. Those totals are spread across the years you own the car using the published pattern that repair spend runs near half the lifetime average under warranty and reaches 2.6x past fifteen years, then scaled to your mileage. A brand-new car therefore lands around $20–25/mo rather than the $110/mo lifetime average, which is what AAA's 11.04 cents per mile describes. The four bands and the mileage scaling are modelled; the totals and the warranty terms are published.
• Body style — the marque prices are fleet averages describing a compact crossover, so the shape you pick scales them: a small car ×0.74, a saloon ×0.88, a compact SUV ×1.00, a three-row SUV ×1.30, a pickup ×1.28. Those are the ratios between real 2026 base prices inside a single brand's own range — a Corolla against a RAV4 against a Highlander is the same spread as a Civic against a CR-V against a Pilot. Size carries into upkeep (×0.90 to ×1.20, for tires, brakes and fluid volumes) and into cover (×0.95 to ×1.10, since a heavier vehicle does more damage and pickups are stolen more), both smaller effects than the price gap. Picking a named model overrides all of it — those are real cars with real prices, and every one in the set is a compact SUV.
• Warranties — 3yr/36k basic and 5yr/60k powertrain is the industry standard (Toyota, Honda, Ford, Chevrolet); BMW runs 4yr/50k; Hyundai and Kia lead with 5yr/60k basic and 10yr/100k powertrain.
• Mileage beats model year on a used car. Holding mileage constant, a model year is worth only about $240 across these 2019–2022 listings, while 10,000 miles is worth around $670 — so an older car with fewer miles generally beats a newer one with more. The two are partly collinear in a sample this narrow, so treat it as a direction rather than a coefficient.
• Asking prices are quantised. All 38 listings end in $998, so what you see is a price point rather than a valuation, with up to a few hundred dollars of rounding in it. Nothing in the set was listed below $21,998 whatever its age or mileage, which looks like a retailer floor for the model.
• Mileage against resale — the quoted rule of thumb is 5–10% per 10,000 miles, but real asking prices are gentler: across CR-V listings the slope is about $123 per 1,000 miles on an EX and only $57 on an EX-L, so 2–5% per 10,000. Higher-mileage cars in any sample are also older, so the mileage-only share sits at the bottom of that. The page uses 4.5% per 10,000 miles away from a 12,000 mi/yr norm, with age priced separately.
• Trim prices — published 2019 MSRPs for each ladder, plus destination: CR-V LX $24,350 / EX-L $29,750 / Touring $32,750; RAV4 LE $25,500 / XLE Premium $29,500 / Limited $33,500; CX-5 Sport $25,325 / Grand Touring $31,090 / Signature $36,890; Equinox L $24,995 / LT $28,295 / Premier $32,195; Escape S $25,200 / SEL ~$29,000 / Titanium $35,215; X3 sDrive30i $41,000 / xDrive30i $43,000 / M40i $54,650. Other model years are scaled from 2019 at 3.2% a year, which is an approximation.
• Selling it on — the curves give market value, so every route out is below it: a private sale about 12% under, an instant offer from CarMax or Carvana about 26%, a dealer trade-in about 27%. Those come from the published spreads — instant offers 14–18% under private money, trade-ins 15–20% — rebased onto market value rather than onto each other. Two bases, and it matters: 26% under market is only about 16% under private money, because private money is already 12% under market. The note beside the field quotes both, so a figure there is never as punitive as the market-value number alone reads.
• What widens a dealer's haircut — miles, not birthdays. Past 60,000 the spread grows 1.2 points per 10,000 miles, with a small 0.4-point-a-year age term after year five for what age alone costs a car, capped at 40% under market. A seven-year-old car with 45,000 miles is a retail unit and keeps close to the standard haircut; the same car at 130,000 is auction material. A private sale does not widen at all — a private buyer pays a mileage-adjusted market price, and that adjustment is already in the value at 4.5% per 10,000 excess miles, so widening it again would charge you twice for the same odometer. The odometer at sale is the previous owner's assumed 12,000 a year plus your own driving, so a genuinely low-mileage used car reads higher here than it is — put the real number in through the model comparison, which takes an odometer directly.
• Checked against the market. The curves flatten after year five rather than decaying at a fixed rate, because real ones do. Predicted asking prices were then tested against eight CarMax CR-V listings spanning 2019–2024, 19,000–91,000 miles and five trims: mean error −1.9%, worst case 6.7%. That check is what set the mileage rate, added the EX-class rung to each ladder — pricing an EX as an EX-L had been overstating it — and gave hybrids their own premium and retention bonus.
• Subscription rates — real quotes: Sixt+ at $1,000/mo for a 2026 BMW X1 including insurance and two drivers but only 500 miles a month, about $1,200 for the next size up. Flexcar prices below that but wants roughly a 650 score, so the Sixt+ number is the one that applies with no US file. The road-test acceptance is first-hand: a Sixt+ car was taken to the Georgia test and accepted, with the subscriber as the named driver and the insurance bought through the subscription.
• Lease quote — International AutoSource, the expat programme, on a 2026 VW Tiguan: $873/mo, insurance not included, and new cars only. Short terms quote highest; whether a longer term brings the monthly down at IAS specifically has not been verified, so treat the term field as something to ask about rather than a modelled result.
• Credit tiers — Experian Q1 2026 average APRs by band: 4.66% super prime (781+), 6.27% prime (661–780), 9.57% near prime (601–660), 16.01% for poor credit on new cars; 7.70% to 21.77% across the same range on used. The no-US-file row is an estimate, because what you are quoted depends entirely on which newcomer programme you can reach.
• Georgia TAVT and licensing — Georgia Department of Revenue (7% of fair market value, 3% for new residents) and the Department of Driver Services (30-day residency clock, reciprocity list, and the accompanying-driver rule for the road test). The $200–400 for a road-test car and instructor is a market rate, not a published fee.
• Everything else — sales tax, fees, registration, lease terms and subscription mileage caps are typical values you should replace with your own quote. Fuel is excluded throughout because it is the same car either way.