My car buying rules have evolved to this:
1. Any cars with lower resale/higher depreciation: I keep long term and drive the wheels off
2. Cars with better value retention/lower depreciation, I drive as my 2nd car with lower mileage burden. If I buy, I try to pay it off so I can fully recoup costs when I sell, if I lease, I make sure it had a reasonably high residual value so I don't get killed on the lease terms and end up paying for too much of the car anyway before I return the lease.