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Article: The lords of leasing; The crew that crunches numbers at Automotive Lease Guide are the rulers of residuals - and they've set the auto leasing world on its ear.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Automotive News
- Article date:
- March 26, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Crain Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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To many, Detroit is the center of the automotive universe, the home of the industry's big dogs. But a small company in the laid-back beach hamlet of Santa Barbara, Calif., increasingly is becoming the tail that wags the dogs.
The firm, Automotive Lease Guide, is the most widely used benchmark for determining the residual value of vehicles - what they will be worth up to five years down the road. In a nondescript one-story office on a sleepy residential street just a stone's throw from the beach, 30 mathematicians, statisticians and data analysts pore over every vehicle on the market to determine their worth when used.
Their decisions can rattle corporate ...