← Methods
Data & sources
Where the numbers
come from.
Everything on this site is built on public data: government statistics, central-bank research, ratings-agency series, industry reports, and the disclosures companies file themselves. This page lists all of it, what each source covers, and where it shows up in the work, so any figure can be traced back to a named, checkable origin.
What this publication does not use. No loan-level or borrower-level tapes from any lender. No proprietary or subscription datasets presented as our own. No vehicle-history or title-history data. Worked examples in the method notes are synthetic, generated from the stated formulas to illustrate mechanics, and are calibrated to, never copied from, the public sources below.
01 · Government & regulators
Official statistics and filings.
Primary public record, the backbone of the sector work.
| Source | What it covers | Used in |
|---|
| Federal Reserve | FEDS Note: "Subprime Auto Lending: Trends in Buy Here Pay Here Auto Lending" (May 8, 2026), bank-facility structure, guarantor coverage, advance rates, and the post-Tricolor probability-of-default re-rate. | BHPH & certificate briefs |
| Federal Reserve Bank of New York | Household Debt and Credit Report (Consumer Credit Panel / Equifax), the 620 subprime line, auto-loan delinquency by tier, origination shares by credit score. | Loss attribution, DPD notes |
| Consumer Financial Protection Bureau | Consumer Credit Trends and auto-finance Data Point reports, market monitoring, enforcement actions, negative-equity and repossession research. | Underwriting & recovery notes |
| Federal Highway Administration | Highway Statistics Series, Table VM-1, annual vehicle-miles traveled and the ~13,500-mile average annual mileage used in term-to-life matching. | Term / useful-life note |
| Bureau of Transportation Statistics | National Transportation Statistics, Average Age of Automobiles and Trucks in Operation, fleet-age and vehicle-miles series. | Term / useful-life note |
| U.S. Senate Banking Committee | February 2026 auto-repossession inquiry (minority release), the letter, its twelve recipients, and the error-rate framing. | Repossession-liability note |
| SEC EDGAR | 10-K / 10-Q / 8-K / ABS-15G filings, issuer disclosures, financing terms, and securitization due-diligence scope. | Stress-signal briefs |
| NHTSA | vPIC & recall databases, vehicle identification, safety, and recall data. | Collateral context |
02 · Ratings & securitization
The ABS record.
Cumulative-loss assumptions, credit enhancement, and deal-level disclosure.
| Source | What it covers | Used in |
|---|
| Fitch Ratings | U.S. Auto Loan ABS Index (subprime net-loss and 60+ day delinquency series), the sector loss benchmark. | Benchmarks, loss attribution |
| S&P Global Ratings | Auto ABS presale reports, expected-cumulative-net-loss (ECNL) assumptions and structure detail, deal by deal. | Stress-signal briefs |
| KBRA | Auto ABS rating & surveillance reports, ratings, credit-enhancement levels, and collateral pool summaries. | Tricolor & CACC briefs |
| Moody's Ratings | Auto ABS indices & presales, cumulative-net-loss expectations on a comparable (un-haircut) basis. | Stress-signal briefs |
03 · Industry & market data
Published market series.
Financing trends, valuations, and vehicle longevity, all public reports.
| Source | What it covers | Used in |
|---|
| Experian | State of the Automotive Finance Market (quarterly report), loan-term distribution (the 73-84-month share, now ≈⅓ of loans) and subprime origination and delinquency shares. | Loss attribution, term note |
| TransUnion | Quarterly Credit Industry Insights Report (CIIR), auto-loan 60+ day delinquency by risk tier (1.45% in Q3 2025) and origination trends. | Benchmarks |
| Cox Automotive | Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index (MUVVI), monthly wholesale used-vehicle valuation and depreciation trend. | Recovery & term notes |
| Edmunds | Quarterly Insights Report, negative-equity data, share of trade-ins underwater (29.3% in Q4 2025) and average amount owed ($7,214), behind the LTV axis. | Loss attribution, negative equity |
| iSeeCars | Longest-Lasting Cars Study (2025), odds of a model reaching 250,000 miles, from ~400 million vehicles analysed; the basis for the reliability-tier ordering. | Term / useful-life note |
| RepairPal | RepairPal Reliability Ratings, average annual repair cost by brand (e.g. Toyota ≈$634 vs Porsche ≈$2,345); the ordering behind the tier repair-cost column. | Term / useful-life note |
| Consumer Reports | Annual Auto Reliability Survey and Cost of Car Ownership study, reliability and ten-year ownership cost by brand. | Term / useful-life note |
| NIADA / NABD | NIADA Used Car Industry Report and National Alliance of Buy Here Pay Here Dealers operating benchmarks, BHPH and independent-dealer metrics. | BHPH sector notes |
04 · Company disclosures
What issuers report themselves.
The stress-signal briefs read only what a company has publicly filed or announced.
| Source | What it covers | Used in |
|---|
| Credit Acceptance (CACC) | FY2025 Form 10-K, quarterly earnings releases, ABS financing 8-Ks, and the forecasted-collection-rate-by-vintage table. | CACC brief |
| America's Car-Mart | Form 10-K/10-Q, credit-facility and covenant-waiver 8-Ks, and term-loan disclosures. | Car-Mart brief |
| CarMax | 10-K and CarMax Auto Finance (CAF) segment disclosures, provisioning and loss-reserve detail. | CarMax brief |
| Tricolor Holdings | Rated/unrated ABS reports, ABS-15G due-diligence filings, and the bankruptcy docket, plus the public fraud allegations. | Tricolor post-mortem |