Opinions solicited, our 99TL has been wrecked 2 times, once fairly hard. It is still a good car, but I worry about the long term durablity after having all the work done on it. The local dealership has an 02 silver TL non-nav and we can make a fairly decent exchange even though there has been body work on ours. Ours is black, and the last time it was repaired they had a hard time getting a perfect match to the paint (too little metal flake). I like all the updates on the 02 but it will still end up costing us around 7g's to have owned the car for 2 years & 2 accidents. What would you do?

 

Is your insurance going to help you pay? I don't think it is a bad move. What choice do you really have? If you get rid of your 99, you have to buy something. Tough decision. Good luck.

 

No the insurance company is not going to help, they paid to fix the car the second time it was wrecked.

 

It sounds like a pretty fair deal to me. If you figure you would have paid around 400 a month to own, 4800 a year, then it's not too bad a deal.
You probably had to put some money down on it, and since your probably negotiating with the same dealership, I would push for a TL-S model.

 

I went through a similar experience about a year ago when someone ran a stop sign and just about totaled out my Chrysler. While repairs were satisfactory, I never felt comfortable again knowing the car had been wrecked with its structural integrity compromised. I had 3 months to go on the lease, but after the car was fixed, decided to pay it off and turn it in on the WDP 2k TL I'm now driving. I have no regrets. If you are getting what you feel is a fair deal on the trade (and it seems to be), I'd go for it! FWIW

 

What's your mileage on the car? My 99 is almost 38k miles. I think 7G is a good trade considering it has been in two accidents (1 bad). If you are so worried about it you should trade up. 7000/24 = $300/month... not too bad.

 

I figure you're in one of two situations:

1) You had planned on trading sometime in the future, taking a loss on the car. If it will only cost you $7k to trade-in (an amazing deal, I don't know how you pulled that off with two accidents on the car), that puts your monthly cost of ownership to date at $291. Now would be a great time to trade while you have a good opportunity

2) You had planned on keeping the car long term after the loan was paid off, driving your cost of ownership down. After being compromised, I wouldn't risk hanging on to the car for the duration of the loan, and then enough time afterwards to hit the monthly figure you had in mind, so I'd play it safe and trade it in.

To summarize: TRADE IT IN! ;-)

 

Thanks for the input to all, ended up trading in on a 02tl-non nav, anthracite (sp). 2 miles on it, we really like all the new features and the new look. Our old one only had 23k on it and we owned it outright, thus the conundrum. We had every intention of keeping it for the duration so the long term effects on the mechanical integrity plus the loss of the original paint work helped to motivate the decision. Look forward to using this board as a resource... starting now. What is the power window service that they did before we got the car, and is it related to the fact that the auto down/up feature only worked on the 1st day, and I haven't been able to duplicate the feature since then.