Many people choose to buy their vehicle on finance, but if you need to scrap your vehicle can you do so while you still have outstanding finance on it? Your finance agreement can have a considerable impact on the rest of your finances, as well as your credit rating as a whole, so it's important to know the legality of your plans before going ahead.

Can you scrap a car with finance owing?

Put simply - no. You can't knowingly scrap or otherwise get rid of a car if you know you have finance outstanding. Remember that financing a car doesn't mean you own it, you don't own it until your final payment on the vehicle is cleared. So scrapping a vehicle with finance still owed on it means you're actually scrapping someone else's vehicle.

Doing so could lead to you being heavily fined, and even potentially prosecuted.

What are your options?

Before arranging scrap car collection on your financed vehicle, you have to weigh up your options. One option is to contact your finance company and get the settlement figure from them - this is the amount of money it will take to buy yourself out of the finance agreement and make the car your property. If you do that, the car is yours and you can scrap it.

Another option is to repair the vehicle to the point of being roadworthy again, and use it until you have completely repaid the finance that is owed on it. In some cases, it might be that repairing the car to a roadworthy condition will cost you considerably less than paying your settlement figure to settle the loan, so this is an option worth considering.

Complete your finance first

The crux of the matter is that scrapping your car if it still has financed owed is not an option, because put simply it's not actually yours to scrap. That means if you have a vehicle that isn't roadworthy you need to consider either buying out the loan on it before scrapping it or getting it repaired and using it for the remainder of the finance period.

When your finance period has ended, however, contact Motorwise to get the best quote and easily scrap your car.