Woe is the tale of the Dodge Hornet. Originally intended to be a volume model to save Alfa Romeo, it got a quick-and-dirty rebadge job in a desperate attempt to shift units in the states. That plan simply didn’t work. Now, we’re seeing some ultra-cheap leases out there as dealers pull every lever to get these things moving.
I myself have derided the Hornet in the past, when I reviewed the Alfa Romeo original. My criticism was based on the fact that it was being sold as a luxury vehicle at a relatively high price. The Tonale lacked any real flair or spark to justify such expenditure, and I passed a stern judgment on that basis. However, the Hornet is now really cheap—below $30,000, in fact. Under those conditions, it’s much more appealing—it becomes a cheap and comfortable SUV that gets where you’re going.
Indeed, the Hornet is becoming tantalizingly cheap—in some parts of the country, at least. Let’s explore the deals on offer and see whether they make Dodge’s troubled compact SUV any more appealing.
Two-Figure Deals
The hottest deal that caught my eye comes to us from AutoNation Dodge RAM Broadway, down in Littleton, Colorado. Down that way, you can score yourself a Dodge Hornet R/T for just $79 a month. The lease is for a 24-month term, with a $1,000 down payment and $995 “acquisition fee” due at signing.
Add it all up, and you’re in for about $162 a month with all that taken into account—or about $3,888 in total over two years. That’s not a whole lot to pay for the privilege of driving a brand-new vehicle for two years. The Hornet may not be the fastest or fanciest fare out there, but it becomes a lot more attractive at those prices.
You’re also getting the desirable R/T model—it’s the plug-in hybrid with 288 horsepower and 32 miles of all-electric range. This is a vehicle with an MSRP starting at $42,530. The reason it’s so cheap is because of government subsidies—you’re getting a $6,500 Federal Tax Rebate and a further $4,100 tipped in from the state of Colorado. However, there’s also a further thing to watch out for—mileage. You’re limited to just 5,000 miles a year. You really don’t want to go over that limit, either. Exceeding the limit is charged at 30 cents a mile. If you did 6,000 miles a year by accident, you’re up for an extra $1,800—which would quickly spoil your cheap lease.
Alternatively, you could head over to Larry H Miller’s place down in Denver, Colorado. It became famous for its $0 Fiat 500e leases—which we later found out were 100% legit. Now, they’re offering the 2024 Dodge Hornet R/T for $99 a month, which is a lot more expensive, but still really good. I’d love to be more specific on the deal, but at the time of writing, the dealership was yet to confirm the size of the down payment required to secure the lease.
Maybe you don’t live in Colorado, but you still want a cheap Dodge Hornet. Sounds unlikely, but I’m willing to humor you. In that case, I’d say your best bet is to get a job at Stellantis while it’s still a going concern. Then, you’ll be eligible for employee pricing over at Galeana’s Van Dyke Dodge Ram in Michigan! Oh, but you’ll have wanted to already been there for some time, so you can also score the lease loyalty bonus, too. So, basically, to lease a Dodge Hornet on the cheap… you should have moved near a Detroit auto plant about two years ago.
What’s cool is that Galeana’s has a really fun deal. You can get two Dodge Hornets for just $222 a month! It helps you, because you get a car for yourself and a car for a friend. It also helps them, because it gets rid of the Hornets twice as quickly. If you and your spouse want matchy-matchy Dodge Hornets—no judgement!—this could be a great way to go.
The deal lasts for 27 months, and you get a more generous allowance of 7,500 miles a year. However, you also have to stump up a $3,995 down payment per vehicle. Run the numbers, and you’re paying $6,659 to drive a brand-new Hornet for just over two years, and the same amount for the second one, too. [Ed note: I read this as “two-for-one” and that feels like a better deal. It also requires qualifying for the Stellantis employee discount. – MH] That’s not as amazing as the Colorado deal, since there’s a lot less government subsidy involved. Still, it’s pretty good. You’re getting to drive a plug-in hybrid worth over $40,000 for the same price you might pay to lease a $24,000 Nissan Kicks.
The simple fact is that these 2024 Dodge Hornets aren’t getting any easier to sell now they’re a whole model year out of date. A parked Hornet is just taking up a spot that could be filled with another more popular model. Beyond that, dealers often take on debt for stock with “floorplan” finance, which costs them money every month. The longer these Hornets sit, the more dealers want to get them gone.
You do need to jump through some hoops to get these deals. It seems Dodge is happy to offload its unwanted vehicles to people in very specific circumstances. You either have to live in Colorado or work for Stellantis to score here. That’s not great if you hate living at altitude or resent the idea of tying your career to the business equivalent of a small drunk bear piloting a 737. But if you do slot in to one of these neat categories, you could get motoring on the cheap. Just watch those mileage limits and mind how you go!
Image credits: Dodge
Top graphic: Dodge; stock.adobe.com
best new deal Ive seen pushed is here in TX, lease a VW ID4 for 1000 down and 149 a month and includes 500kw of charging per month………. 10k a year mileage. That’s pretty flipping awesome.
I’m starting to question the Autopian’s general sanity that they keep trying to get people into these pieces of shit.
“A parked Hornet is just taking up a spot that could be filled with another more popular model.”
But is there a more popular model made by Dodge at the moment?
Just be sure to have a reliable car on hand at all times. Having an alternate Hornet does not count. It’s not a Dodge, it’s an Alfa/Fiat. When those recalls roll in and issues pop up, you and the service center will have joint custody. And you’ll be lucky to get weekends and holidays.
I don’t care how cheap they get if the electronics are still completely dogshit, and I’ve heard absolutely nothing implying they aren’t
I’m glad the feds have the whole deficit thing figured out so they can continue to throw money at social engineering projects that keep the real cost of some cars artificially high.
I recently had a hornet’s nest in our basement ceiling. I blocked the entrance to the outside so they all flew around the basement until they all died. I never got stung because I never swatted at them or anything. However I did shop-vac up hundreds of them both alive and dead.
Anyway, here’s some free advice: If you have a vacuum bag full of these things, make sure empty it. The rotten pheromone stench is really hard to describe and lingers for days. Fun stuff.
So thats why a Dodge dealership smells the way it does… rotten hornets.
I picked up an RT with a Track Pack about a month ago for what ended up being about $6850 single-pay, 24/10, so just under $300/month, all in. In Minnesota, which doesn’t get these crazy extra rebates that Colorado gets. It was the cheapest lease deal on pretty much anything on the market that isn’t an EV (and even then it beat out the Ioniq 6 I had been shopping alongside it). Pretty happy so far, even if it’s already spent time getting its charger port fixed (Italian electronics, cost of doing business). It’s also not as shit to drive as 99% of crossovers on the market.
The twofer deal seems like the way to go. If you manage to keep them running for about 50% of the time you should always have a working vehicle available. That’s a low enough bar even Stellantis might be able to clear it.
I think the pronunciation of the vehicle’s name should be altered to hor-NAY (emphasis on second syllable) to accent that relationship to the Alfa Tonale. Adds a little panache.
The $222 deal might actually work. You can alternate vehicles and get a reasonable amount of miles usage. Proving you’re eligible for that deal could be tough though.
I’m considering this depending on how cheap I could get a lease for. Our Escape only does about 7000 miles a year or less, and the vast majority is very short in town trips. It’s only getting about 20 mpg doing this. 32 miles of EV range, and with our crazy cheap electricity (.08 cents kwh) makes this extremely compelling.
This thing got very little buzz when it was released, and dealers are feeling the sting now.
I’ll see myself out…
I bee-lieve the Hornet is a honey of a car on paper but with Chrysler reliability it wasp doomed from the start.
Ah, I see this little nest where you drone on trying to get COTD.
Not personally trying to be queen bee, just a dad who enjoys the nectar of puns
$15Kish off for purchase in the Chicago area. It’s actually kind of tempting.
Even if you go into penalty mileage up to the annual average, $162 a month is great deal for a new vehicle. The big drawback to these is their price, and this relieves that flaw.
These are clearly better than a Chevy Trax, and those lease for 3 years for about $260 and up before adding in the $2500 down payment and the disposition fee.
Shit on it all you want, it’s still a great deal from a manufacturer that is probably feeling a little desperate right about now, being stuck with the old CEO’s bad decisions and no way to correct them quickly.
I would still probably go get one for a daily workhorse and save the miles on most of my other cars.
The Hornet/Toenail, even in plug-in Hybrid form, isn’t all that impressive.
In hybrid mode, it is EPA rated at just 29mpg. By comparison, my 2017 C-Max Energi is rated at 40mpg.
It does have a better EV range of 32 miles versus the 20 my C-max has. But as far as the electric side goes, it’s pretty inefficient there as well… rated at 77MPGe vs 95MPGe in my old C-Max.
And the C-Max’s design was new back in 2013.
The one thing the Hornet has that the C-Max doesn’t is AWD. But should AWD feature hurt the hybrid fuel economy by 11mpg and the electric MPGe by 18MPGe?
And it should be noted that the C-Max itself is a bit of a kludge design-wise.
It suggests to me that Stellantis didn’t spend much time sweating the details of the Horny/Toenail design so that it would be good.
And if they want the Horny to sell, then they need to introduce some lower trims and some versions with just FWD.
Not everyone needs or wants AWD and a bunch of other features that come standard.
for those of us in the Midwest, AWD is definitely a selling point over a few more MPG. New with warrantee and low price to get into one is also a big selling point here.
The other thing the Hornet has that the C-Max doesn’t is 288hp. That’s over 50% more. And that was supposed to be the major selling point.
I’d say the Hornet also has a lot of modern features that the C-Max doesn’t, but from what I’ve read they don’t work a lot of the time.
“The other thing the Hornet has that the C-Max doesn’t is 288hp. “
True… But to me, for a car that is just a daily driver, the C-Max already has enough power. The added power isn’t really as much of a selling feature as they think given the reduction in efficiency.
For sure I get that. Your priorities match your vehicle. I just think the Hornet catches a lot of flak for not meeting needs or wants it wasn’t intended to fulfill. Not from you, just in general. On paper, it’s my ideal vehicle because of what I want in a car. It’s a shame that the quality just isn’t there.
In my view though, they could tweak the design and trim levels so it would fulfill its mission better.
And to do that, start with offering FWD versions. And a offer a more efficient FWD hybrid option. And offer cheaper trims that have less unnecessary shit.
They could easily do that… but they would have to give up on their covid-dream of having perpetual luxury-car-level gross margins.
No thanks I value my life don’t need a vehicle with a failing brake pedal and reliability of the hidenburg
Uh, to who? 5 people?