A Car Loan Is the Easiest Yes Since 2015. The Rate Went Up.

Update, October 29, 2026: Cox Automotive’s September index moved the same direction, further. Credit access rose for a fifth straight month to its highest level since April 2015, loans longer than 72 months hit another record at 31.8%, and down payments fell to their thinnest since 2022. The average contract rate went up 23 basis points to 11.22%. The numbers below are updated to September.

If a lender turned you down for a car loan last year, the answer this fall is probably different. Auto credit is the loosest it’s been since April 2015.

That’s real, and for some people it’s the difference between a car and no car. Here’s the catch. What loosened was the approval, not the price.

Cox Automotive’s Dealertrack Credit Availability Index hit 107.1 in September, a fifth straight monthly climb and 9.4% above a year ago. The overall approval rate reached 73.9%. Roughly three of every four applications now get a yes.

Look at how that yes got built. The share of loans running longer than 72 months hit 31.8%, a record, and it rose in every credit tier. Subprime’s share of originations rose to 17.4%. The average down payment slipped to 12.8% of the deal, the thinnest since September 2022. And the average contract rate went up 23 basis points to 11.22%. The spread over Treasuries only looks tighter because the five-year Treasury jumped even more.

Translation: lenders didn’t cut what they charge. They stretched the term until the monthly number fit, then said yes.

That distinction is the whole story, and it costs real money.

Experian puts the average used-car loan at $27,852 over 67.9 months at 11.19%, for a payment of $542. Multiply it out. You hand back about $36,800 on $27,852 borrowed. Nearly $9,000 of that is interest.

Now put two credit tiers side by side on that same loan. At 6.29%, super prime territory, the payment is about $489 and the interest runs roughly $5,300. At 13.93%, near prime, the payment is about $595 and the interest is about $12,560.

Same car. Same 68 months. A $7,200 difference, decided by a number you can look up for free before you walk in.

An approval is not a price quote.

The finance office is measured on getting you to yes, and the cheapest way to get there is another twelve months on the back of the loan. You feel the payment. You don’t feel the term until year six, when the car is worth less than what’s left on the note.

Do this before you shop.

Pull your score and find your tier. Then get preapproved somewhere that isn’t the dealership: a credit union first, then your own bank, then an online lender. Walk in holding a rate and a term that somebody already put in writing.

Set the term ceiling yourself and say it out loud. Sixty months on a used car. If the payment only works at 84, you’re shopping above your budget, and the loan is telling you so.

Run the deal through our auto loan calculator before you sign, and hold the offer up against the loans we rank and the rest of the loans hub.

Easier credit is genuinely useful if you needed a car and couldn’t get one. Just be clear about what widened. Lenders got more comfortable with risk in a market where the average used-car loan is $27,852 at 11%, and they priced that comfort in. The bill shows up in your last two years of payments, long after the handshake.

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