Appearing in the Boston Globe on November 4, 2025, Camilo Fonseca interviews NCLC Senior Attorney John Van Alst for coverage of how for many Americans, buying and owning a car has become harder than it’s been in decades. And buyers are taking on larger loans than ever before.
“The trends are ‘very alarming, particularly for lower-income buyers.”
John Van Alst, senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.
Those trends don’t necessarily mean a large-scale financial crisis is imminent, said Van Alst, director of the Working Cars for Working Families project at the National Consumer Law Center. But for families that are already hit hard by inflation, the rising difficulty in securing and keeping a car can have devastating consequences.
“Does this pose the same risk as the mortgage crisis?” he said. “No, I don’t think it does to the broader economy. But it does to a large, large, large number of families. The [number of] people affected is really tremendous.”
Unlike other forms of consumer debt that can often be addressed and restructured, defaulting on a car loan threatens a repossession “pretty much immediately,” Van Alst said.
“That’s a risk that most people don’t take lightly,” he added.
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