“Consumers across all income categories are struggling to make monthly car payments,” says credit scoring company VantageScore.
According to VantageScore, auto delinquencies in the U.S. have increased by 50% over the past 15 years.
“We haven’t seen this type of financial turmoil since the days before the Great Recession back in 2008,’ said talk radio financial analyst Steve Beaman.
In September, the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) reported that American car owners owed a record $1.66 trillion in auto debt. CFA stated that the contributing factors to the larger debt were the higher cost of owning a car due to inflation, tariffs, and rising maintenance bills.
Delinquencies on car loans are measured as 60 days or more past due. That number increased by 51.5% from the first quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2025.
CFA said 1.6% of total auto loans were 60 days or more past due as of July of this year. In fact, delinquencies on auto loans were higher than those on credit cards and first mortgage loans. VantageScore says monthly car payments are increasing faster than mortgage payments.
In 2024, around 16 million new cars were bought, and most of them were all financed. The CFA states that there are currently approximately 300 million cars on the road in America.
Rikard Bandebo, a chief economist with VantageScore, said they’re seeing the cost of cars and the cost related to car ownership increase enormously. “In the past five years, it has increased even faster,” he said
Researchers at Cox Automotive have compared prices from 2019 to the current year, and new auto prices have increased by more than 25%. The average cost of a new car is now around $50,000. And people are paying more each month. Automotive researcher Edmunds.com reports that the average consumer is paying $767 for a new car. And one in five borrowers is paying more than $1,000 a month, which includes the 9% interest rate
