Looking for Advice; Lease to buy-out, with an accident in the mix.

Looking for some input on a situation with a lot of moving parts, regarding my lease on a 16' Limited 4X4 4-door Short bed:

-I leased the vehicle as I wasn’t sure how I’d like Truck ownership in the long run (I came from a VW GTI, for comparison!). The idea was if I took to it in the long run, I’d convert to financing it for ownership, and if I didn’t, I give the keys back at the end of 3 years (Lease was signed in Sept. 2016).

-I’m using nowhere near my allotted mileage on the truck (I went for a 20k mile a year package; the truck has fewer than 14k on it as of this writing!), so I’m essentially giving Toyota more money than is needed there. (I was hedging against possibly getting a new job)

-Because the Truck is so low mileage, at this point my plan was to just finance it anyway, since it would be at this point the cheapest way to a used Tacoma with less than 20K on the clock (and it wouldn’t really be a “used” truck from my vantage point anyway).


Then I got into an accident back in May. It was a fender bender with a driver in front of me. My fault. Typical sub 5MPH impact: a dent/scratch for them, and the nose of my truck now looks like it had a stroke; the grill assembly and front passenger light drooping down a bit. (will upload pics later). Under the hood, it looks like it’s mostly broken plastic tabs that are part of the body work, so my fear is it’ll be expensive, unless just the tabs themselves can be replaced. (open to input here!)


-Not surprising though, It drives as though nothing happened. As the truck is mechanically fine, I did nothing other than pay my $85 ticket, as my Wife and I were covering some Vet bills for a dog that we recently had to put down after a week of expensive diagnostics ☹


-Relevant to this, I do have a damage protection plan on the lease, that will over the delta between the value of the truck in this case of an accident.


At this point, my question is, what to do next? I’ve not notified the dealer or my insurance company, as the truck drove fine, but I’m now at the point where I’d like my truck to look better again. So I see a few options:

-Go through insurance to repair, and then look to convert the truck to finance. I would think in this scenario, the dealer wouldn’t really care about the accident, as I’ll just pay off the value of the truck as if it weren’t damaged. I suspect this is the best path forward; I pay the deductible, and get to keep “my” truck. Yes, the downside is it’ll technically be a 1 accident car on Carfax, but as I plan to keep it for the long haul, that’s really not a big deal. The delta will be a case of beer by the time I sell the thing


-Go through Dealer first, and finance. Wondering how the damage would be accounted for here. If it lowers the value of the truck, presumably I’m paying for that somehow, but is that where the lost value protection insurance comes in? And in that case, it plays to my favor to leverage that insurance. On the other hand, my concern is that once I take ownership of the truck, the bodywork damage becomes a “pre-existing condition” and insurance won’t cover it.


Really, just wondering how to pivot the whole situation the best way. Thoughts?

 

I would just have the insurance fix the truck, that's what the insurance is for. Since you like the truck, just pay it off and keep it. Even with the accident my guess is you have equity over the lease buyout amount. You can use that to your advantage and sell the truck if you really wanted out of it and make some money back for not using up the mileage allowance.

 

First I would just get it fixed.

Second while you have very low mileage I would make sure you want to keep the truck if your going to finance it. If your are then this next point is moot.

While you have low mileage on the vehicle, one accident especially if reported to Carfax (note some repairs shops don't report to Carfax). It will drop the value probably 2-3k. If you try to sell you truck for say 32k because of the low mileage good luck. People will just op for the new vehicle more times than not.

You could finance it and then if you wanted a different vehicle use it as a trade in to get the sales tax reduction in your state(if you live in a sales tax state). Otherwise if you keep leasing just try to drive it more.

 

Turn it in at lease end.