It was less than a month ago when we showed a series of “10 charts revealing an auto bubble on the brink“, and which laid out several very troubling trends, including i) the average new vehicle loan hit a record high $31,099; ii) the average loan for a used auto climbed to a record high $19,589…

… iii) the average monthly payment for a new and used vehicle hitting an all-time high of $515…

… iv) the average auto loan hit a duration of 69 months, while the average used vehicle loan has a term of just over 64 months, both rising to new record highs for yet another quarter.

… v) the average price paid for a new vehicle also hitting an all-time high of $35,176, according to Edmunds.com, almost entirely as a result of a massive expansion in consumer credit and record amounts of auto loans.

Summarizing the above is simple: cheap credit leads to easy lending conditions, and record prices as everyone floods into the market with lenders hardly discriminating who they give money to.

But, as we said in March, the key data which seems to suggest that the auto bubble may have run its course came  from the following charts which showed that traditional banks and finance companies are starting to aggressively slash their share of new auto originations while OEM captives are being forced to pick up the slack in an effort to keep their ponzi schemes going just a little longer.

Commenting on these trends, Melinda Zabritski, Experian’s senior director of automotive finance solutions warned that “we’re certainly at a point where affordability is a question. When you look at how much income you need to support that payment, it certainly is higher than your average individual income.” And nowhere was this more obvious than the auto sector’s overreliance on stretched subprime borrowers, who remained the marginal source of auto demand as long as rates remained low.

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