“We mainly focus our leasing on what I call our five main products: Civic, Accord, CR-V, Odyssey and Pilot,” said Steve Jaros, Honda’s assistant vice president for sales in the Eastern region.

Over the last two to three years, amid rising gasoline prices, uncertainty about new vehicle sales and unstable used-car valuations, Honda and other automakers pulled back from leasing. “It made all the manufacturers rather conservative on where they were going to place their residual values,” Mr. Jaros said. “So we wanted to give time for the market to stabilize and gasoline to stabilize so we could get a better feel for where the market was going, and then slowly get back into leasing. And that’s what we’ve done.”

Read the fine print in ads for a special promotion lease, however, and a big change is apparent: high credit scores are mandatory. Forget hazy language about offers being contingent “on approved credit.” On its Web site, Honda reserves the $199 Accord deal to customers who qualify for the American Honda Finance Corporation’s “superpreferred credit tier.”

While there are other offers for potential lessees with less than glistening credit scores, the best deals are usually reserved for customers with scores of about 710 or higher.

Leasing remains, as always, subject to negotiations, just like buying a car outright. And it’s a negotiation between the customer and the dealership, not the manufacturer. DCH Honda of Oxnard in Oxnard, Calif., for example, recently advertised new Accord LX sedans for $179 a month. The dealership used Honda’s national offer as a starting point, but cut the car’s purchase price to lop off an additional $20 a month.

“We’re being competitive,” said Christian Allen, one of the dealership’s sales managers. “It’s a matter of doing something to attract customers. Very rarely does the customer coming in do exactly what the dealer is advertising.”