- A dealership in Boston reportedly sold a four-year lease to a woman who had vowed to stop driving.
- Now that she’s passed away her family says she regretted it, didn’t drive it, and they want to return it.
- The dealer isn’t budging though and requires they pay to end the lease or make the $420 monthly payments.
There comes a time in everyone’s life when driving is just no longer possible. For 92-year-old Grace Gangemi, that was evidently just a few months ago. When she went to turn in her leased car to the Nissan dealer something strange happened. She came home with a new four-year lease. Now, she’s passed away and the dealer says the family can maintain the deal or pay $4,587 to get out of it.
According to Gangemi’s stepson, her legal representative, Grace had resolved to stop driving her car. “I did something I shouldn’t have done,” she reportedly told her stepson after coming home with her new 2024 Versa. The dealer, Nucar Nissan in Norwood, signed her up for $420 monthly payments that would run through her 96th birthday.
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The stepson, Michael, asked Nucar to void the lease and take the vehicle back. According to him, it had just 4 miles on the odometer, the miles between Nucar and Grace’s home. The dealer declined and a manager there described its position this way.
“Who are we to question her ability to drive? If the customer is comfortable driving, then we are not going to question it.” He went on to complain about how cars lose value when they drive off of the lot. The $4,587 is meant to make the dealer whole.
Don’t get us wrong. Those who have the mental and physical acumen to drive a car into old age deserve applause. They also deserve the autonomy to make their own decisions. As the Boston Globe rightly points out though, there’s a dramatic difference between legal responsibility and moral responsibility.
Nucar is under the DCD Automotive group which owns no less than 31 dealerships in total. One would think that they could afford to eat the cost of doing what seems like clearly the morally right thing.
