@Charmante This sounds like a complete nightmare to be honest. This dealer should be at the top of the "hot mess" list. With that being said, and as others have mentioned, as much as it's going to sting, KEEP MAKING THE PAYMENT on your previous vehicle. You want to do so because your previous lender won't care one bit about the jacked up paperwork and payment issue, they'll report your payment as late and you'll be dealing with this mess a lot longer that you want to...trust me.
I also agree that you should contact your Attorney General. The Attorney General is like kryptonite to a dealership. Most dealers (knowing or not) has done something that isn't quite right and the last thing they want is the Attorney General sniffing through their dealership and the paperwork.
Also, start to get a little loud if you need to. Most businesses live and die on the sword of social media. Start making some noise about their shady practices. Tweet them and not local media...you'd be amazed at how fast a company will report when you start airing their dirty laundry.
Now for the part you're not going to like. Unless you got it in writing that they were going to take care of the tax, title, and registration of your previous vehicle, you're probably going to be on the hook for it as it's the responsibility (at least in our state) for the owner of the vehicle to register and pay tax on the vehicle no matter the length of time of ownership. If you owned it for even an hour, you're required to register the vehicle.
With that being said, the dealership will also feel the pressure to get the vehicle registered as they won't be able to do anything with the title until the mess surrounding taxes and registration have cleared. So what they have is a vehicle that they can't even legally sell.
This is probably get a little more messy before it gets resolved but do what you can within your power to speed this up by documenting everything, keep making the payment as much as it sucks, and again, start blasting them on social media to see if that helps get their attention. All you need is to get the attention of one local journalist (preferably local news) to run with such a story and watch how quickly the dealer responds...especially if they have a habit of doing these kinds of shady deals because they don't want others sitting in their living room yelling "...they did this to me too..." at the television.
Best of luck to you.
