Keep or buyback - what would you do?

My wife and I leased in 2013 our TDI convertible beetle (black with tan top) and have loved it. We were hoping to have see the impacts of a fix by now but alas seems still a long ways away. Of course we never saw this recall coming and now have exhausted our lease extensions from VW Credit. VW Credit says they can not extend any further and have drawn a line in the sand saying they have to abide by the terms of the lease.

So it seems that we still have our lease options available do we;
1) Buy it for our residual which is around $15k and wait to see what happens.
2) End the lease and get our $3500 and run since VW doesn't have anything else we would like at this point.

If we opt for 1) then we wait and if we don't like the fix we just forego the $3500 or if the fix is reasonable, we get that done and get our $3500.

Concerns;
Already have sunk $13k+ into 3 years of lease and hate to start over.
Will its valu drop like a rock or not be able to sell in the future without having the fix done.

On the plus side with 85% of TDI's possibly destined to be off the road and so few convertibles showing up in used market, seems maybe it might keep its value regardless of fix.

With only 28k mi on it, we are leaning to keep but curious what others would do?

What do the buyback calculators say your buyback payment would be? If you can buy the car for $15K, you may be able to immediately resell it to Volkswagen on the buyback for a fair profit.

One of the calculators on the site indicates you could sell this car back for around $28,000

Almost doubling your money in a couple of months!!

pretty sure you can't do that as a lessee

You cannot let your lease run to full term, buy the car for the residual, and then sell?

I guess you are right. They would be selling a non conforming car.

Any lessee buying out his lease after 28 Jun 16 can only get 10% of the vehicle value plus $1529. However, one can buy out the lease and subsequently sell it to third party. And that third party would be buyback eligible. And if that third party is willing to make a deal to split the buyback check and if the numbers make sense to do so, find a friend and go for it.

Pretty sure the value of the vehicle no matter what I do is set. I would have had to buy the car before June 28th, 2016 to be considered an eligible owner. As is I am just considered a leasee, I think any post sale would still only qualify for the same buyout.

In searching the forums, seems most are owners and not leasee's, leasee's pretty much get the shaft even when we were the ones to payoff much of the depreciation of the care which is the same as an owner. But other than VW not previously disclosing the eligible ownership date, I guess I can't complain too much. Worst part was that I was in discussing the purchase about two months prior to that deadline and was told by the dealer to just wait. If leasee's would have been treated like owners, I would probably do like others are and dump just because the huge sum it would have returned.

If, as a lessee, you cannot (1) buy out the lease, and then (2) be eligible for buyback in the event that no fix is approved, then it seems like you have no option other than terminate the lease under the settlement, take what money you can, and run.

Unfortunate that the lease termination date precludes the ability to play wait-and-see until 2018.

BEETLE_MN said:

Pretty sure the value of the vehicle no matter what I do is set. I would have had to buy the car before June 28th, 2016 to be considered an eligible owner. As is I am just considered a leasee, I think any post sale would still only qualify for the same buyout.

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As I read the documents, my take is that the lessee would not be buyback eligible if he bought out the lease after Jun. But I see nothing that says a third party would not be eligible. Quite a delta between $3500 for lease restitution and nearly $28K for the buyback. At least worth a good look.