I just popped over to Honda's website and clicked through on a new CR-V. I went with the EX trim which is the 2nd cheapest of six available trims. After clicking next on every screen without adding any upgrades, it offered me $33,745 MSRP with 36-month financing at 2.49% APR, which came to $1,035/month.

For 3 years? Yeah that makes sense, but if you do 40k (think SUV / upgraded mid-sized car) at 70 months, at 5% its in the 750 range a month, which is still not quite that high. I can't imagine most people do 3 year car loans.

Yeah, I have to imagine that the convergence of:

- people buying new

- but looking for the cheapest trims

- on an aggressively short loan

is particularly large. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the 108 month or more loans starting to show up, but still.

According to this site [1], the average car payment is $724.

[1]: https://www.lendingtree.com/auto/debt-statistics/#:~:text=Th...

Interesting, I think so far I've only had used cars, but even so my wife has a newer car than I do, bought it brand new, and she's paying below that threshold so it surprised me to hear that amount.

Car payments have skyrocketed since the pandemic due to the massive increase in prices and the increase in interest rates.