How do you get rid of a car you cannot afford if you owe a lot more on it than it is worth?

Answer 1

I was in this exact same position last year with my 1999 Daewoo Nubira CDX S/W. The company went bankrupt and my car was worth 1/10th of what I owed on it when I went to trade it in on a newer vehicle. Unfortunately, as I discovered after asking everyone I knew who might have an answer, there are very few options for people who are "upside down" in their property, be it a vehicle, house, boat, etc. No matter how a salesman may explain it to you, the numbers don't lie. You will still walk away owing more than what you have. So, unless you can find someone really naive to buy your vehicle for what you owe and not what it's worth, or you get the deal of the century on a newer vehicle that will offset your losses, you're not likely to come out ahead or even break even.

In my case, we found a Chrysler van that suited our purposes much better and we got a reasonably good deal on it. However, even though they gave us a pretty good offer on our Trade-In Value, we were still short by about $5500 which had to be paid for by someone...you guessed it...your's truly. They were kind enough to roll that amount in to my new loan which just means that I'm still upside down in this vehicle as well. Oh well.

Moral of the story: Buy low, sell high and never be in a hurry to buy anything.

The short answer is "you can not". You must talk to the Finance Company or Bank that loaned the money for the purchase. All outstanding finance MUST be settled before you are able to transfer ownership legally.