Until the last payment, your car really belongs to the lender.

If you’re involved an accident other than one involving a total loss before it’s paid off, full coverage car insurance will pay to repair any damage, less your deductible.
there are times when choosing it can be the right decision.We know because we’ve been involved in auto loans since 1992 here at Auto Credit Express. We even designed a website so that people with both good and bad credit can study such topics as FICO scores and file segregation as well as today’s topic, the benefits and drawbacks of gap insurance.

the insurance company will typically pay its retail value (possibly less any deductible) at the time of the accident.

The only problem with a total loss accident is that if this situation occurs in the first half of traditional auto loans or even further along where small down payments are involved, the auto insurance settlement could be thousands less that the loan payoff.