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
The burning question that everyone seems to be overlooking is…
WTF is the leasing/finance company going to do with a bunch of two-year-old, 10k mile Hornets??
That kind of clear-headed, logical thinking is why you’ll never get far in the fast-paced world of automotive financing.
That’s a problem for management in 2 years, current management is trying cash a bonus check this year and then be somewhere else when the Hornets come back.
Haven’t you learned that short term solutions result in great long term problems yet?? It’s the American way!
That sounds like someone else’s problem to me.
Most likely they will end up on a rental lot or perhaps a Black Friday deals. But PSHHHT, that is a problem for someone else I am sure is the thought.
Nice to see that the payoff for having to deal with the stress of being a Stellantis employee is a cheap lease rate on a car literally nobody wants.
Does Stellantis have a popular model of vehicle?
Nope.
Eh, I think they still have a few Trucks and SUV’s at Dodge, Ram and Jeep that are popular enough. I know I kind of want the last of the SRT Durango’s before they go completely away. They are kind of like Minivan’s in disguise to be honest.
But won’t it likely spend most of the month in the dealership’s service bay?
The 2-for-222 deal seeks to provide a solution to that problem.
My FIL had a rental hornet PHEV and we went for a trip in it. Some observations:
1) It is about as “meh” a car can be in 2025
2) holy hell it has the smallest fuel tank I’ve ever seen in a modern car, 11 gallons and at around 29mpg we had to fill up a twice as often as we would otherwise.
these aren’t good cars and at least the alfa has the teledial rims, these have nothing.
29mpg from a PHEV, even without the opportunity to plug in, is…not good.
right? like it seems downright criminal engineering to make such an inefficient vehicle
My Escape PHEV is getting 40 mpg. I did see a Hornet in the wild yesterday, and it is a good looking vehicle.
I can think of a lot more fun ways to spend under $100 to regret it for years
I take issue with the headline of this article. There is no $79/month lease. It is, as you say in the body, $162/month.
You are repeating the dealership’s disingenuous ad. Why? I know this site better than to assume it is for clicks. Right?
Once you add it up together for total cost outlay…but money down isn’t really bait and switch and why you have to advertise if there’s money down. Which every single manufacturer advertises that in their own national/regional incentives.
Disingenuous is saying you have to qualify for employee pricing like the next ad or whatever Monopoly money tax rebates can play for some areas.
Yeah, that was initially going to be the lead here. I will say, though, this is a dealer in Warren, Michigan, so qualifying for Stellantis employee pricing isn’t that hard for a large chunk of the population.
Yeah, always seems like if you don’t yourself qualify, then you know a friend or family member who will toss you a code (if they still allow that?).
Generally, when talking about leases, we always make sure to include the total cost in the story. However, to just be consistent we tend to use the advertised amount if it’s not completely ridiculous. Also, because our “art” is the advertisement it’s easier to grok this way. Also, this is just how leases work. If it was $9,000 down and $50 a month that wouldn’t work, but $1,995 at signing isn’t abnormal.
But the advertised amount in this case IS completely ridiculous! Because the usual upfront fees more than double the lease “rate”, and that’s before the low mileage stipulations.
I appreciate TheAutopian always including the actual costs in your articles. IMO it’s not click baiting… I see the $79/mo in the headline and know opening the article will give me the real story. That’s one of the many reasons I continue to use my clicks here. Thanks for the good work.
I have to admit, I’ve never considered a new Dodge until now. Local deals on leases are under $300/month for 3 year 10k/year with no money down for an AWD SUV PHEV. I don’t think I would ever buy a Dodge, I don’t trust them long time, but I live close to work and drive under 10k/year now and this would allow me to have a vehicle for 3 years with a full warranty.
At my current Credit Union rates, $300 is only a $16k car if I take a 60 month loan and I don’t know of many $16k cars in today’s market I would trust for 5 years and 50k more miles before they have problems.
I’ve always been taught to avoid leases, but it seems like with today’s interest rates, they might make sense.
Hmm, my car has the 2.4L Toyota engine and it’s drinking oil now and starting to stink of something other than Taco Bell… maybe 230k miles over 20 years is enough service.
Leases make total sense if you look at them as an annualized cost, sure you don’t end the lease with equity but you’ve essentially paid for a service
I think it completely depends on the interest rates and usage. We got a new van almost 20 years ago and I think the rate for a 72 month loan was under 6%. This meant that purchase payments weren’t much more than lease payments.
We packed the van full of kids, with car seats and messy fingers and crayons and the like. And we drove a LOT. We didn’t want the kids trashing the car and we didn’t want to spend our lives in the van, but it happened and it wasn’t the end of the world.
But now, when I look towards retirement, the miles go down, the possibility of trashing the car goes down and with today’s interest rates being significantly higher, leasing starts to make sense.
And it’s not like you need to get a vehicle that will be yours and paid off for 20 years of service like we are doing with that old van when you are 70.
Leases can make sense sometimes, but you have to look at a ton of factors. Some things to consider.
I typically leased a car for my wife because it was easier to just keep her in a newer vehicle and she was hauling around kids. We’d also use that car for long trips, etc. I bought the cars I drove and kept them for 9-10 years if new, or 6-7 years if used. It worked well, and often when I ran the numbers, it was a 8-9 year payback on buying the car (before factoring in maintenance) vs. leasing a new one every years. But there are bad lease deals out there too. It’s a numbers game. I think leasing an EV is the smart way to go if you want an EV and don’t want to go the smarter way of buying a used one coming off a lease that took a huge depreciate hit.
Leasing isn’t the better deal most of the time, but I’d never say to never lease a car. We currently own most of our cars, but I leased a small SUV for my son 2 years ago because he goes to school in about 9 hours away and I wanted something dependable for those drives, and something that could get serviced at the local dealership there.
The $79 lease sounds good until you get to the 5,000 mile limit. A cheap used car seems like a better choice for those drivers. Realistically, if you drive less than 5k per year you are only driving when necessary. You aren’t going very far, and you aren’t driving for enjoyment. A cheaper used car would be a better deal, especially considering a used car could last many years or even decades with that little use.
The more I think about it, I don’t know who this deal would appeal to. There are cheaper transportation options for those who don’t drive much. If you are someone who rarely drives but wants something nice or entertaining, I doubt you will be interested in a Hornet. Who is the person that rarely drives but desperately wants a thoroughly mediocre new vehicle?
See directly below — that’s slightly my personal use case (if I could get it in CO, but I can’t). I need a quick, no-brainer, warrantied commuter vehicle while I shop for something more long-term. I’ve done WFH for almost a decade and we basically have 1 car now and need a second.
But I think the bean counters are fully expecting to make twice as much on the mileage overage…and/or damage assessments when you get rear-ended in traffic.
Retirees for sure. They want something under warranty that is cheap and only need a few thousand miles a year.
I know a few that get regular leases and always turn the in thousands and thousands of miles under the limit on low-mileage leases.
That makes sense. I see low mileage leases as a poor use of money, but if you are retired you may be in a position where saving money is less important.
For those buyers, my concern with the Hornet would be reliability. These have a poor reputation. If saving money is not the primary goal, I would go for something with a better reputation. A broken car is annoying, even if someone else is paying the repair bill.
I get the sense that it is very important for the retirees I know to have a fixed expense to pair with their fixed income. I’m guessing they would be OK with visiting the dealership as a trade-off if needed. But realistically, when you barely drive something there is less opportunity for things to go wrong. Dead batteries and recalls are usually the worst of it.
My Father used to work at a buick dealership awhile back and the cars he would service for retires were amazing. Super low mileage, come in for an oil change once a year and only have put 2000 miles on it. Nothing ever broke on them because in 6 or 7 years they would only do 12000 miles.
I remember hearing similar reasoning when I first heard of single-pay leases. Sounds scary but if it’s one and done, then less to worry about with penalties for ending the lease early or something along the way.
I can see leased cars when I retire.
I’m about 10 years from retirement. My money goes to four things:
My goal is to have the mortgages paid off before I retire. The out of pocket expenses for medical bills are lower with Medicare than with my current insurance (yeah, my company’s insurance sucks) and hopefully, between retirement saving and a paid off house that has significantly increased in value since we bought it, I should be ok financially to retire.
Right now, even with work, I rarely exceed 10k/year on either of my vehicles, since my house is close to everything I need, even work.
My wife is a Toyota girl, since we have had such great service from our pair. However, if we are getting leases for 3 years/30k miles, we basically can get anything to drive for a couple years and not have to worry about breakdowns with a lease.
The big curveball is dogs. I can’t imagine life without them. My wife runs an animal rescue group and I don’t see that passion leaving her when I retire. My favorite breed, even though we have only fostered them, are Great Pyrenes. Wonderful dogs, but they don’t work well with the dark interiors of modern cars and they tend to leave claw marks on everything they are around, even by accident.
“Who is the person that rarely drives but desperately wants a thoroughly mediocre new vehicle?”
Grandma.
Very good point.
My father in law bought a Cadillac XT4. Besides the badge that appealed to his 80 year old self I can’t find anything it does better (or worse for that matter) than any similar sized vehicle.
I could do that 10,000 miles over 2 years if I stuck to just my commute (3 days/week) and nothing else. And for a “commuter car” that’s usually how it works.
It would be awesome to turn it in after the lease period with the ICE engine never having been turned on.
#LifeGoals
If they didn’t half ass the software controls like they do for pretty much everything else the power train controls should fire up the ICE engine at a minimum of once per month just to lubricate the engine, and as it was designed for the EV motor to really only supplement the ICE rather than the ICE only being a generator to use the full performance of the vehicle or even just a bit more than the electric motor alone can provide will have the engine racing from cold. Not sure if they put a PTC heater or heat pump but in places like Colorado where it gets cold your only heat source besides seat heaters is the ICE as well. So while you may in some cases run it without the engine on its unlikely to make 10k without running once.
These sort of lease deals probably make sense for people who hardly drive (like my wife, who works from home). She puts about 6-7k a year on the Forester. But outside of WFH folks or retired people, I’m not really sure who this is for.
Regardless, what a massive, massive flop from Stellantis. This is one of the most popular segments, that even Mitsubishi manages to move plenty of, and you basically are forced to give them away? Brutal. And unfortunately like most things, once you have to pile on incentives to move a model, you’re unlikely to be able to move the needle back.
That being said, at a certain price, I truly believe these aren’t a bad gamble for someone looking for a small CUV. It’s a risk, but if you get one that outperforms it’s reputation, you’re doing well. I mean, people buy VWs at full or near full price everyday. To me this is like buying a VW, but 10k cheaper.
I was never sure who the Hornet was for at all. It’s not an RWD-biased V8 so it doesn’t have the appeal to the “Brotherhood of Muscle” crowd they’ve been cultivating with the Dodge brand since the Marchionne era, and it sure wasn’t intended as a followup to the bargain-bin Journey which was the last Dodge CUV.
Initially, I thought these would sell decently to the office manager set at semi-rural industrial facilities we do work for.
Boy, was I ever wrong!
I feel like you just described the target customer for the Journey
A Hornet is firmly in the “you’d have to pay me to drive one” category. They’re just such half baked, borderline hateful products. I feel like Stellantis would be actively laughing at my expense if I were to subject myself to the punishment of driving one of these things. But hey, if you paid me $222 a month or whatever to drive one I might be willing to do it. Are you listening, Doge?
How much is the desire to laugh and and how much is it is inertial Covid mindset of “they’ll happily throw ALL the money at us for whatever crap we put out!”?
This is turning into the answer of a philosophical question . . . .”At what price does a bad car turn into a good deal?”
“Well, we’ve already established that, now we’re just haggling over price”
lol love that joke
Even $79/mo seems too expensive for the “privilege” of driving a warmed-over alfa crossover.
I could stomach the $79/month. It’s the $2k down that pushes it past my tolerance.
Funny! That’s why I quit!
Very few people would be able to live with a 5-7k mile limit given the average is about 15k/yr. I know I couldn’t. Might be okay for someone retired – my mother’s got about 40k on her 10 year old Mercedes. But then again, she bought the car as a CPO for about 35k, and has had it for almost 8 years now, which works out to about 4300/yr as of today- and she owns it, and can sell it toward her next car if she wants to.
Gonna’ see lot of blue-haired Hornet drivers doing 20 MPH on their way to and from the grocery store.
You won’t see them, but you’ll see their hands at 10 and 2.
It seems like the Michigan dealer has your answer by giving you two Hornets with 7500 miles each.
It seems Colorado has great benefits and incentives to get these crazy deals compare to other states. Here in Michigan, the $0 Fiat 500e was more like $220 with 1K down. I went with the Equinox EV for the same money, I had more incentives that I applied with GM (GM Supplier pricing, Lease loyalty, current owner of Chevy Bolt EUV, GM credit card and Costco membership).
I’m gonna say this despite the great deal…don’t buy anything from AutoNation. They are terrible. I had to fight with them to fix things in a presale agreement on a purchase. My wife had a coworker who was sold a car on the things OnStar could do…right before their 3G onstar was disabled. Like a couple weeks after the purchase. Others have had similar issues. For a HUGE dealer network, they are the shady back alley car dealer. Run…far away.
“A parked Hornet is just taking up a spot that could be filled with another more popular model.” – This implies Dodge has a more desirable model to replace said Hornet with, currently they do not…
‘-like what?’
Was my thought as well
If the Hornet is basically replacing the Journey, it’s almost as desperate a makeover as when the Caliber replaced the Neon. It’s like “Dude, overcorrect much?”
I figure most Dodge dealers are combined with Jeep and Ram (Chrysler doesn’t count lol) so they would probably love to put those vehicles in there (despite, well, all the issues they have as well, but at least they sell!)
They don’t have many models, period. Popular or otherwise. Just the Durango and a tiny trickle of Charger Daytonas starting to show up here and there
5,000 or 7,500 a year is why I never lease. I’m closer to 20,000.
Yeah, just commuting to work is around 10k a year for me. With travel I’m a bit over 20k a year.
Although if that $0 Fiat 500e lease was in my area I’d still take it, even though it would mean I have to drive a Fiat 500 sometimes.
Maybe they’ll do that 2-fer deal but with 500s, one gas and one electric, ready for any driving situation.
That way the odds that you’ll constantly have a working Fiat are much improved too. They’re still far from 100%, but they are better!
$79/month to hang around a Dodge dealer’s service waiting room seems awfully steep.
The free coffee better be good.
And the TV better have HBO.
Its the one thing Stellantis wouldn’t try to import from the European market.
Let me know when they start paying us to take them, and I might consider thinking about never driving one.
Advertising employee pricing to to the general public, and then hiding that it’s employee pricing only in the small print, is pathetic as fuck. I fully expect it from dealers, but I’ll still call it out.
Seems to be De Rigueur in Metro Detroit. Also popular: Offering employee pricing to the general public.
I will say it IS weird to see advertising basically targeting their own employees.
In my area, I think I’ve seen more Rivians on the road than Hornets.
Honestly, I don’t recall ever having seen a Hornet on the road.
I’ve seen one – ONE – Hornet on the streets, but at least two Rivians here in NE OK.
I see 5-7 Rivians a day (yes, some are duplicates) but I have never seen a single Hornet. I had completely forgotten they existed until this post.
Challengers and Chargers are pretty thick on the roads, though. You can usually smell the weed before you see the car.
I live in a town with a population of about ~100k. I see a dozen Rivians a day. I see one-ish cybertruck a week. I see a high end coupe (like a 911 GT3) once a month. I have never noticed a single Dodge Hornet. I can’t say that I haven’t seen one and repressed it, though.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more new Nissan Z’s than hornets, and I live in Detroit…