I bought a 2005 Honda CR-V LX 4WD for my mom as a replacement for her
Accord, which had 130k miles. The justification for getting into the
CR-V was that she lives on a long steep hill, and when it snows it is
tough, if not impossible to get home. Also she drives a lot to work on
a local highway, which is not always plowed.

So we took the base LX, added dealer installed fog-lights for better
bad weather/night visibility, and the vehicle ended up costing just a
few $$ short of $21,000 ($20,595 + $491). The dealership promptly
prepped and delivered the vehicle and took care of registration and
other paperwork.

After a few days of driving (100 miles round-trip), my mom is unhappy
with the car. The road noise is too much, the car is too jerky on the
road.... CR-V users, please take this with a grain of salt, I am not
bashing the car, I liked it :)

So she does not want an SUV (or a CUTE-UV, whatever the term is), she
wants a passenger car, otherwise she does not feel safe.

To make the long story longer, we go back to the dealership, say that
we are unhappy with the car -- too much road noise to tolerate, too
unstable, so we want to swap it (paying the difference, obviously!) for
the similarly equipped 2005 Accord LX-V6 (has traction and ABS).

Dealer says: it is now a trade-in, and is generously willing to give us
$17,500 for the car that was driven off the lot A WEEK ago, and has 600
miles on it. Pretty steep of a drop if you ask me -- $3,500 for a week
of driving....

What can we do in this situation? I do not want to go through the
trouble of selling the car through the newspaper (tax trade-in reasons
+ time)... Can anything be done?

I looked at Kelly Blue Book, they do not have the trade-in values for
2005 (obviously!), but the 2004 CR-V LX is $17,500. So 2005 has to be a
bit more, right???

We are fully prepared to pay some money -- it is a loss, so it is
perfectly understood, but not $3500!
Any suggestions?

Thank you in advance!