The GM goes, "It doesn't work that way."
I go, "It does when you commit bank fraud."
GM is upset with me, and I remind him, and I'm being really nice here, that this situation can totally get really ugly for him, like felony-level charges ugly. Like losing your franchise ugly. So, yeah, this is going to hurt, but it's going to hurt less my way.
So, the GM goes, "All right." And he looks in his inventory, and he tells me they have a 2007 Focus with 10K more miles.
I tell him, "No, the car you give my friend needs to be the same or better than what he traded in."
The GM counters, "I'm giving him a free car."
And I go, "No, you took his trade-in, you sold it, you made money on that sale, and you also committed a felony in the process of selling him his new car, and you are now correcting that mistake. Remember that. This is not a free car for my friend. This is a you correcting your mistake, or OP could say a get-out-of-jail-free card."
GM insists that that's what he's willing to do, and I tell him if he cannot do better, then we will go to a consumer protection attorney and have a conversation with them. My friend didn't want to go this route, but it was our plan B. We get to get up, and the GM says, "Wait, give me a second."
The GM goes, "I have a '08 Civic. It has 5,000 more miles, but it's a Civic and not a Focus. Well, I unwind the deal on the new car and put your friend in the Civic at no extra cost."
We agree to this, and the GM has the paper drawn up, and the old loan on the new car is canceled. They take in the new car again, but because it's already titled, they'll have to sell it as used. That sucks for them, and they give my friend a better car than the one he traded in.
For people asking why we did not get a lawyer involved from the start, yeah, we could have done that, but courts take a long time, and this was a faster way to fix the situation.
And the next one is a very satisfying petty revenge story. It is also brand new and it is titled teammates were annoying so I made them the best brownies of their life.