A good portion of people that use to buy cars can’t afford to buy a car outright. They buy on credit/lease, and live paycheck to paycheck (literally and figuratively speaking)….It works when credit is easy and there’s a paycheck coming in….Doesn’t work so well when credit is tighter and doesn’t work so well if the paycheck goes awol…Definitely doesn’t go well when you have a combo of the two….
Having a new car is a “nice to have”, not a necessity.
That’s the problem with the auto industry right now. Too many companies still producing too many cars for too few of people who are able and willing to buy a new car….Kinda like the glut of homes our RE builders are facing. Except cars usually have some sort of brand loyalty going on.
There’s no point in throwing more money at the problem to produce more cars if the demand isn’t there.