Tommy: three in ten subprime car loans run until the car is twelve. Dougie: smaller payments, I'll buy two. Scarf: you're paying longer, not less. Town hall: stretch my loan to a hundred months! Abe: Mayor, does a longer loan make the car cheaper? Mayor Dithers: yes. Tommy learned something today: buyers finance older cars for longer. Dougie: my car's older than my loan. Wait.
More than 30% of subprime car loans written in the first half of 2026 run until the car is over 12 years old, up from 7% at the end of 2019, because buyers are financing older cars for longer: the typical $15,000 to $20,000 used car is now about six years old against just over three in 2019, and loan terms have stretched to about 68 months, inside a $1.7 trillion auto loan market.
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X · Oct 13, 2026
