"Offending clunkers" - buyback punditry

I kept my last one ten years ('03 Mazda Protege5) and felt terrible when I sold it. But I had it and my brand new, at the time, TDI and I reasoned that the TDI will be the car I have until I'm in my mid 50's (in my mid 30's now).

I'd be sitting pretty if I figured out a way to just keep her. If there were a buyback, I'd just pocket the money and wait it out until a deal appeared while driving my now 13 year old beater. The way this is going to pan out is it will come at a really awkward time for me and I'll have to jump into another car relatively quickly. That's how you get hosed, am I right? I'm looking at the eco diesel Jeep Grand Cherokee, but Jeep's initial quality rating is absolute shit and if VW gets TDIs certified the following year, and I've got a Jeep that's been back for warranty service a couple of times, I'm going to be fuming.

That would give me about $1100 to put towards a new car (I owe roughly what it was worth pre-scandal). That's not even enough to cover a down payment on leasing the cheapest piece of shit one can find, let alone something actually worth driving.

Well, I just feel the EPA will not force VW to buy it back from you if you refuse to accept the terms. You could join a class action if it has a better outcome. Or, you could negotiate directly with the Feinberg team. They might square you on your loan to call it even and have you sign a nondisclosure. Pure speculation.

The more likely scenario, is that they put you in a brand new comparable gasser and leave your loan terms as is (in lieu of carrying your balance over onto a new loan).

If VW gets new TDIs certified, and they don't skimp on materials in order to cut costs, I might jump on a new VW offer myself.

Right there with you on this question. I almost rather they just give the option to fix the car. I'd take it over going upside down on my loan. I don't think gap insurance would do it though. I looked and it is pretty much just for accidents as far as I could find.

FACT: In the event of a buyback, it would work exactly like any other situation where you chose to sell the vehicle: before you transfer the title the note must be paid in full. So you would either need to sell it for more than you owe on the loan, or you would have to pay the difference between the sale price and loan balance out of pocket.

FACT: GAP insurance isn't going to cover it.

SPECULATION: No buybacks have been announced, so nobody can tell you for sure what the parameters of any sort of buyback program would be. But we can make some reasonable assumptions. For example, we can assume that VW will be required to get all models with Gen1 engines off the road. Consequently VW might be preparing truly generous offers that will cover the amount that you owe on your loan. That may or may not be the case. But even if they offer you less than you owe on the loan, there's nothing to stop you from trying to negotiate a better deal. If you submit proof that you owe more than they're willing to pay then perhaps Feinberg's people will up their offer, especially if you are only upside down on the loan due to dieselgate depreciation. Alternatively, they may do it like any other car deal where someone has negative equity, i.e., pay you whatever the buyout cost is, then get you a loan on a new/used VW and roll the difference into the loan on the new car. I suspect that this is likely how you wound up owing more than the car is worth in the first place.

Are you sure you'll be upside down? They'll have to use private sale values, not trade in as that doesn't make any sense. They'll have to account for the effect of the scandal on depressing the values. AND they'll have to sweeten it on top of all of that to compensate for our hassle/time/etc and to get as many of us to accept the offer as possible. For everybody that doesn't accept a buyback, they could still face an individual lawsuit, which will cost them much more $$.