Couple of things....
On a lease you'll adjust your down payment to get the monthly payment where you want it. If you can't put enough down to make your payments reasonable, that says you can't afford to buy it.
With regard to the residual....remember, if you look after the car it will be worth way more than the residual at the end of the lease. You then buy the car outright by paying the residual to the holder of your lease then sell the car on your own at market value and pocket the difference.
I bought out a lease once on a Honda Accord for about $10K. Drove it another 3-4 years then sold it for what the buyout was. Had I sold it when I paid the residual I'd have pocketed about $5K.
Before I bought my 370 I looked into a lease. The residual was not negotiable but with $20K down the monthly payments were really cheap. The residual was about $22K, IIRC. I estimated I'd pocket about $6 to $8K selling it after buying out the residual.
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