The vehicle conundrum

I kind of backed myself into a corner the last couple years.

In the summer of 2008, I made a decent bonus at work and was facing some costly repairs on my car. I was able to haggle the shit out of the car dealership for a trade, and drove off the lot in a brand new Honda Ridgeline. I love the truck. Despite the high cost and not-so-efficient gas mileage, in no way do I regret my purchase.

In retrospect, however, I regret the financing terms and everything that's happened since buying it.

I leased the truck for three years and immediately knew I would be financing the residual and keeping the truck. That is still the plan. I put a few more miles than my lease allowance in the first year, knowing that was the plan. About a year into the lease however, we cleaned house at my company and fired one of my outside sales reps. On top of that I've taken over some bigger consulting projects at my job and filling in sales responsibilities for the sales rep we lost. As a result, I'm on the road all the damn time. And it's not just in-town driving, it's driving all over northern New England.

Almost 2 years into my lease, I now have 52,000 miles on the vehicle.

I know that if I maintain the upkeep I can get a very long life out of the truck. But what I don't want is for the value of the car to continue to drop while i'm still making payments. I realize I'm already at that point.

Like many other Americans, I'm not exactly living the life of a high roller and can't afford to just pay off the residual or pay cash for a low-mileage Camry for all my work driving. The company pays for my mileage, which I've been trying to bank, but with unforseen expenses for childcare and medical bills it's not adding up as quickly as I'd like. The last thing I want is to buy a cheap car to get by and then end up in Portland Maine with an overheated engine.

Anyone here overcome a similar issue? Or do you have a car you want to sell me for dirt cheap and allow me to make payments???