While I was thinking on this some more, I know that sometimes lenders will deliberately avoid picking up a car that was discharged when the car's not worth much.
It leaves the borrower in a situation where they don't have the title, but they also can't get rid of the car. It's a strongarm tactic.
They should reopen the bankruptcy and make a motion to redeem the car for $1.
If the lender responds and accepts the $1, the borrower gets the ownership of their car complete with the title for $1. The lender is basically admitting that they don't want the car and it was never about the car, and they were just trying to strongarm you into paying even with the bankruptcy, which is illegal.
If they contest it, it means that they could end up being court ordered to pick up the car or hand you the title.
The other option is to abandon the car at a bank branch of the bank that gave you the car loan. Take the plates, take your stuff, lock the doors, take the insurance off of it, and they'll tow it away eventually and sell it for scrap.
Another option is to get with a car scrapper who takes cars with title issues, and they might even offer you a fair bit of cash, because what they'll do with it is let it sit in an impound yard for a while and then bill the lender for it sitting there. Then they'll get a scrapper's lien on the title and sell it for scrap metal regardless of what the bank wants because their lien will get them the title by force for scrapping purposes.
There's some ways to play hardball with an unscrupulous lender who is trying to make you pay for a car that was included in bankruptcy.
But generally as long as the car runs fine you can keep registering it and driving it even if it's technically liable to be repossessed. If it's been "years gone by" they obviously don't really want it.
Financing is bad. Especially on used cars, it's bad.
The average rate for new is 7%. The average rate for used is 11.6. So you can buy a newer used car and the loan interest can wind up costing you more than a new car.
It's always better to pay cash, especially since some of these lenders are out there charging so much interest that it goes up nearly as fast as you pay it. More than half of subprime car loans get repossessed eventually, and the higher the interest rate bracket, the higher the repo rate.
At a certain point, they're just borrowing at "mafia interest rates" where there's a 90% chance the car goes right back or the engine will blow up, you can't pay for the loan or a new engine, and you get yourself sued while you have no car.
Many lenders don't care if you ever pay it off because their business model assumes you won't and they'll make a lot of money anyway.
My mom's ex-husband ended up buying a 1993 Chevy Pickup from a BHPH lot in 2013, so 20 years old then. It was rusty, and they put a starter inhibitor on it that enforced the weekly payment schedule. The cost to have bad credit is a short leash and a lot of interest. He ended up paying more interest than the cost of the truck, which was already marked up over 300% above fair market value because it was intended to be financed to people who don't have two nickels to rub and don't pay their bills.
Many people in this country sleep better at night thinking finance is regulated, and while it kind of is, it's really the Wild West. Anything goes, and the people who run those "weekly payment" lots don't tend to follow the laws unless it happens to benefit them to do so because they deal with people who are too poor to sue them.
As far as the court system is set up, there's only one class of people rich enough to sue over anything. People who don't really need the money but sue to enforce their contracts to scare people they do business with into paying. And people who don't really plan to win the lawsuit, they just use them as paper terrorism against victims that have to defend themselves until they're out of money.
Nobody cares what the used car lot did to you, and good luck getting it in front of a judge that cares about you.
