Tucked inside a massive federal spending bill at the height of COVID, disguised as an “essential jobs package” amid the lockdowns and layoffs, was a mandate that has the ability to transform the automotive new and used car market. In the days ahead, we may see a shift in vehicle pricing, organic market movement away from new vehicles to pre-owned late-model pre-IIJA (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) vehicles once the full scope of the implemented technology is understo

Automotive transaction data reveals that negative equity is no longer self-correcting—it's compounding. With nearly 30% of trade-ins underwater and borrowers rolling over $10,000+ into new loans, the auto-finance industry has quietly turned vehicle ownership into a perpetual debt cycle and subscription based service. Here is why the negative equity trend may worsen through 2027 and beyond.

It's Saturday morning in 2035, and you've decided to buy a car. What actually happens? Initially, it seems like an easy question. You're greeted by a friendly, autonomous, AI driven machine instead of a receptionist. All the paperwork is digital. Traditional vehicles sit alongside electric and autonomous ones. Perhaps it's closer to a kiosk than a dealership. It's a relatively easy task to imagine what that Saturday morning will look like until you stop and ask yourself, Who

How Jasmine Escaped $10,000 in Negative Equity. Own More. Owe Less. I'll never forget Jasmine. She walked into the dealership carrying what she thought was an impossible problem. She owed nearly $10,000 more than her vehicle was worth, and every conversation she'd had up to that point ended the same way. "You're just going to have to keep driving it." Her payment was already uncomfortable. The miles on her vehicle kept climbing. Every month she made a payment, but it felt li

Every good car buyer, the ones that research, do their due diligence and prepare for the war that will be their next vehicle purchase, knows the end of the month is when you buy a car. Conventional wisdom says sales managers get desperate as day 30 and day 31 approaches. But ask the average consumer why, and you get vague answers about monthly quotas, and to some degree that is true. The real push behind end of the month panic is called a stair step program, or a volume tier

Americans now owe $1.685 trillion in auto loan debt, making car loans the second largest category of consumer debt in the country, trailing only mortgages. ​While the headline numbers show record high average payments of $770 for new vehicles, the most concerning story is happening under the surface. A quiet debt bubble may be forming, driven by how heavily the middle market is getting squeezed. ​Look at the payment data by credit score. Working-class buyers in the nonprime t

It may seem like a strange position for a consumer-facing automotive advocacy firm to take, defending the traditional dealership sales model. But there's a growing sentiment among car buyers, clamoring for Tesla's direct-to-consumer auto sales model that erroneously conflates a frictionless "fair" buying process with financial advantage, and it's an idea worth pushing back on. Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) sales are routinely lauded as a modern, frictionless utopia. No sleazy sale

Guaranteed Auto Protection, universally known as GAP insurance, occupies a strange, paradoxical space in the modern auto market. To the average buyer, GAP is viewed as the ultimate F&I trap. Decades of their high pressure showroom tactics and consumer advice columns have trained buyers to regard back end products with legitimate deep suspicion. The mere mention of GAP often triggers an immediate defensive reflex, a perceived unnecessary add on designed to extract a few more d