We suffered through a subprime crisis in mortgage lending a decade ago, leading to an eventual collapse in housing prices. Now some people are worried that we're undergoing a similar crisis in subprime lending to auto buyers. According to the New York Fed, 23 percent of all car loans are now being made to people with credit scores under 620. Car loans to people whose credit is that poor has roughly doubled since 2010.
But that's mostly an artifact of the tightened lending standards implemented during the recession. If you extend the window back even further, subprime auto lending is still below where it was back in 2006 and 2007, before the recession hit.
Car buying has reached an all-time high, moving at an annual pace of 17.2 million sold in August. That's another artifact of the recession, when people put off buying new cars. The average age of a car on an American road is 11.4 years, up from 9.8 years in 2005.
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