Traded In (surrendered) Car At Dealership As Part Of A New Car Deal. Six Months Later, Repo Shows Up At Residence. Dealership Now Claims To Not Know Where Car Is, Or What Happened To It.

My wife bought a used car from a dealership. The car had high miles, but ran good, and was a decent deal. The car made it about a year, and broke down a couple states away with my wife on vacation. She was able to limp it to the nearest manufactures dealership. They said the fuel pump was bad, and that there was so much sludge in the engine, they wouldn't recommend driving it.

Eventually they did some repairs, and my wife was able to make it within an hours distance to the original dealership where she purchased it, and they came and towed it in.

So now she's basically told that the car is worthless, and she worked a deal on a new '23 model..... Nothing fancy, under. 30k.

The dealership told her, not to worry about the broken down car, and that everything was taken care of.

First problem came a month later, when the finance company tries to withdraw a payment for the broken down car. My wife gets in touch with the dealership, and the bank, and it gets reversed... They say it was a mistake, not to worry.

So, like 6 months later, a repo rig shows up at my house looking for the car.

And now the dealership is acting like they don't know what happened to the car, or like they just "lost" it or something, and don't know where it is, or what happened.

Seems fishy to me.

I mean could they have resold the car, after telling my wife it's worthless, and now just lying about it.

I guess it's going to tank our credit for a couple reasons, when my wife did nothing wrong except to believe what they told her.

Would it be worthwhile, or the smart thing to do to contact a lawyer in this matter?