the lease comment came from a combination of
a) the first officers response, which directly mentioned leases
&
B) my original post, which had the opening line:
theres a discussion on my local car forum about confiscation of property that has active leins, in this case, the discussion is based on the recent mass-confiscation that recently happened in NC due to suspected street racing
so obvioulsy they know that the discussion here involves modded cars
but now to specificly address his “when the lease is up” comment … i dont beleive he is that far off base with it, as long as its a general statement about ALL kinds of cars.
if you lease a focus, and drop in a built short block with a monster turbo, thats onbiously a “niche market” type car, which would be quite hard for the lease company to sell, considering the # of people that would be in the market for that specific car
but on the other hand, if you leased a supercharged saleen, and droppin in a built shortblock and an upgraded supercharger, that would be much easier for a lease company to sell due
but now if you do these mods and the lease company has to REPO the vehical, your fucked, because the lease company will take your ass to court and claim “reduced value” and say “we are going to have to sell the car at below wholesale prices because its modified”
same with if its confiscated, and the lease company gets the option to take possession of it, say its a $30k car, 25k left to pay off, car is worth 25k (in stock form) when its repoed, and theres 10k in mods
the lease company will take advantage of the fact that its modified and when they wind up taking you to court, they will probably try to tell the judge it was only worth 15-20k when they got it back, because you modified this this and this and its gonna cost $xxx to return itto stock. especialy if the car doesnt have all its smog equipment in place anymore