Almost A Quarter Of New Car Buyers Got 7-Year Loans Last Quarter

Folks, the cars are too expensive. The average new vehicle transaction price hit nearly $52,000 recently, and average payments are up to lucky number $777. It gets even worse from there, though, as those high payments are paired with ever-increasing loan terms: 23.9% of new-car buyers are now opting for loans of 84 months or more. 

The data comes from a report by Edmunds, which looked at new-car buyer behavior during the second quarter of 2026. Its results border on horrifying: Over a third of car buyers now have loans longer than six years, including the nearly 25% that have those seven-plus-year loans. The average loan is now $44,156, because as car prices have gone up buyers have actually found themselves with less money to put down — an average of $5,815, which is down by over $600 from the second quarter of 2025. Is it any wonder the average age of a car on American roads keeps rising?

It's easy to blame this buyer behavior as people shopping above their budget, and that may certainly be a part of the issue, but there's more to it than that. Wage stagnation has reached a truly dire point, with research showing that nearly half of U.S. households don't earn enough to meet basic needs like food, water, and shelter — that's all before getting into needs like "a way to get to work." That data is from before the Trump tariffs and before the bulk of recent AI-based job cuts, meaning things are even worse now. Everything costs more, and no one makes enough money to cover it all. 

With rising costs to keep older cars on the road rising, especially now thanks to the unprompted and unproductive U.S./Israeli war on Iran, it's not unreasonable that car buyers — especially those brought up in a system that doesn't teach financial literacy and leaves them unprepared for adulthood — would shell out for the safety and security of a new-car warranty. If we want to address these issues, we'll need to do more than shame people for their spending. It'll mean a ground-up rework of our economic systems and our schooling.