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.