Hyundai Now Covering Payments While You Job-Hunt

Hyundai’s latest bid to get buyers in the door, dubbed Assurance Plus, will be offered on all new purchases during the brand’s Spring Sales Event, which runs Feb. 23 through April 30. Like its namesake suggests, Assurance Plus builds on the newly minted Assurance Program. That’s the deal where, if you lose your job, you can turn in your recently purchased Hyundai without having to pay the negative equity.

Now, with Assurance Plus, Hyundai will also make three months’ finance or lease payments on your car while you look for work. If you still can’t find a job, you can turn in the car under the Assurance program’s terms and have any negative equity — whatever you still owe, minus the car’s trade-in value — absolved.

Hyundai spokesman Chris Hosford said the Assurance program, which debuted in January, was “definitely a part” of Hyundai’s 14% sales increase compared to January 2008. He added that Hyundai doesn’t have any plans to extend Assurance Plus past April 30. Most Hyundai dealers (more than 95%, Hosford said) are participating.

Both Assurance and Assurance Plus will come for one full year at no extra charge. Hyundai will assume a maximum liability of $7,500, Hosford said, and you need to have made at least two payments before filing a claim. The cap is meant to keep people from returning damaged cars or ones with tens of thousands of miles on them, he said: “As you know, there’s never been a program made that hasn’t been gamed.”

Note that any payments Hyundai makes under Assurance Plus go against that cap, so if you buy a pricier car and accrue major negative equity, that could affect things. Buy a V-8 Genesis with little money down, and three months’ payments under Assurance Plus could total $2,000 or more. That considerably lowers the negative equity covered under Assurance. For most of Hyundai’s lineup, though, the cap should prove high enough. Just make sure to run the numbers before considering either program a limitless catch-all.

Comments

Well good for Hyundai. It seems like these plans could be a bit risky for the company, but if it generates car sales, good for them.

But like the story posted on here stated a few days ago, it's increased their sales by a significant amount, yet only 2 people have taken advantage of the Assurance program...very clever of Hyundai!

If keep em' moving is part of the car business, then Hyundai seems to be on to something the Big 3 has failed to see.

Hello Big 3!!! Is anyone home? Look at what Hyundai is doing?

sarahsmile90,

No real risk to the company. They're essentially buying the same kind of gap insurance that you could buy yourself through many other dealers from a company that has been doing this on a big scale in Canada for quite some time. Assume they're getting a volume discount. So probably a bit cheaper than $5K cash on the hood. But really seems to be resonating in the marketplace. Quite a smart move on their part it seems.

This is really good of what Hyundai's doing. It gives the people who are having a financial breakdown a break. Hyundai's definately redeeming itself. Why wouldn't the Big 3 do the same with their customers? Great job Hyundai for actually thinking of your customers and doing something about it in this economic crisis.

The reason the "Detroit 3" are not doing this is because they are not financially stable like Hyundai.

Parson,

While you do have a point, and in fairness a week Won is working well to Hyundai's advantage, a third-party is the company taking the real financial risk. And I'm going to imagine this is cheaper than the piles of cash the Big 3 are putting on the hoods of their product.

That said, I don't know of a another company that offers a similar product to WALKAWAY's, so it may be that Hyundai negotiated an exclusive deal with them and the other auto companies can't yet find a way to match this.