In a standard car loan, you pay mostly interest in the first half of the loan. Say a standard 5 year car loan, for 2+ years most of your payments go to interest. Thus by the end of year 3, you have only paid slightly on the principle, but have paid off most of the interest. This is so the bank is assured of getting its money quickest, and because if they have to repossess it, now they can logically expect to get a decent return on their investment. The last half of your payment plan is paying mostly principle.
A year into the loan, if you ask for a payoff balance, it will be significantly different than the total balance. Principle minus the interest that would be generated for the duration of the loan. With only a year LEFT to pay, your payoff balance and total balance are not that far apart. More than likely, almost all the interest for the loan has been paid already, whats left is almost all principle, therefore there is not much of a discount to be gained by asking for an early payoff. Best thing they can do, is continue making payments until they only owe around $6000 and then pay the car off early. No more owed anywhere, not even small payments, and it looks great on their credit report. Next best alternative, get someone to refinance the loan, paying off $6000 of the remaining debt, but then they are going to be making interest payments again. Payments would be considerably less though, which would help if they are hurting on making the payments. Which I doubt if they have $6000 in extra cash lying about.
Or you could try Morph's suggestion. Thats problematic though, because I'm not sure they'd let you use the card to apply to a loan payoff, and cash advance would nullify the 0% interest.
