7 mins read
There’s a huge variety of cars available to lease for your business, but which represent the best mixture of value, comfort, and style?
There are still those who believe that a leased company car will always be the lowest common denominator of motoring. A car picked for you by accountants whose only criterion was cost.
Nope, it’s just not true. The fact is that when you’re leasing a car for business purposes, there’s a whole wide world of choice out there, and you really can balance the competing demands of affordability and style. How?
Well, you could do a lot worse than pick from one of the three cars we’re going to discuss here, starting with the Skoda Octavia. The Octavia has been a roaring, runaway success for Skoda since the first Octavia (well, the first modern Octavia — the name dates back to the 1930s actually) was introduced in late 1996. In the 30 years since, not only have more than eight-million Octavias been built, more than 85,000 have been sold or leased in Ireland alone. It’s a firm favourite with Ireland’s motorists.
Frankly, it’s not hard to see why. The Octavia is like a cheat code for modern motoring — while everything around it becomes more and more expensive, the Octavia remains excellent value for money, and you can lease one for your business starting from €577 ex-VAT per month from NiftiBusiness (and that includes a full maintenance package and tyres, calculated over four years, with an allowance of 160,000km in total — that applies to all the figures in this piece). While those early 1996 Octavias were designed to be simple and affordable, nowadays the current model is far more sophisticated, with cabin quality and comfort that rivals even Audi.
The Octavia’s winning hand has always been its practicality, and the current edition offers vast rear seat space and a massive boot (more massive again if you go for the handsome estate model) but it’s also good to drive — underneath, the Octavia, as it has always done, shares its chassis, suspension, and engines with the VW Golf, and it drives and steers with the same sense of smooth precision. If you’re offered an Octavia as a company car, rejoice — you’re onto a winner.
If, however, you fancy something with a dash more style than a straightforward saloon, what about a Hyundai Tucson? The Tucson has become a hugely familiar sight on Irish roads, as it has been the best-selling car for almost all of the past ten years, but that familiarity should not bring with it any boredom. You might have seen lots of Tucsons around, but take a closer look and you’ll realise what a stylish SUV it really is.
The way the LED headlights are seamlessly integrated with that broad front grille is still a seriously striking element of style, as are the rear lights, which seem almost to drip from the full-width light bar that runs across the bootlid.
Inside, there is a bright, airy interior with very neat digital instruments, and Hyundai is one of the few car makers right now which truly understands that while touchscreens are cool, you still need some proper physical buttons to make everything easy to operate on the move. Not bad at all for €632 ex VAT per month on a business lease.
It’s not all style either — the Tucson, especially in its plug-in hybrid form, is also hugely efficient. Fully charge its battery from mains electricity and you can go for a potential 63km on just electric power, which should be enough to cover most people’s commutes and daily driving. As long as you’re diligent about your plugging-in, that can put a serious dent in your annual fuel bills.
Of course, if you’re looking at leasing vehicles for your business, then you should probably be looking at something electric, especially with the new lowest A1 band for BIK taxation now being in force. The choice of electric cars is booming right now, but the best of the lot when it comes to the combination of affordability and style might just be the Polestar 2.
The compact Polestar 2 might be the Volvo spinoff brand’s oldest model in design terms, but it’s been kept fresh under the skin, and there’s a new Business Edition version which helps to bring down the leasing cost to €803 ex VAT per month. For a low, sleek car, the Polestar is pretty roomy (and really well-made) inside, and even the most basic version has a range of up to 554km (and it’ll easily do 450km in real-world driving).
Best of all, the Polestar 2, even in its business-friendly form, is seriously good to drive, with sharp steering and a sense of real driver enjoyment about it, something that many other EVs seem to miss out on.
So it’s true — leasing doesn’t have to mean just the cheapest car around. You really can successfully blend value, style, and driver enjoyment all in one package.
All pricing valid as of January 2026. Vehicle pricing is based on 48-month term, 40,000KM allowance, with three upfront monthly lease payments. Vehicle Image for illustration purposes only. T&C’s apply.