Good piece on Bloomberg today about the auto repo industry.  It looks like many car owners bought too much auto:

With more Americans struggling to pay their bills, the $1.7 billion industry for repossessing such assets as cars, trucks and boats is gearing up for a boom. The effects are expected to reverberate through countless ordinary lives and onto Wall Street, where car loans are packaged into bonds and sold to investors…  

In March, the percentage of subprime auto borrowers who were at least 60 days late on their bills was 5.3%, up from a seven-year low of 2.58% in May 2021 and higher than in 2009, the peak of the financial crisis, data from Fitch Ratings show. While not all of those borrowers will face repossessions, the risk is high…

It’s difficult to determine exactly how many repossessions occur each year, but Cox Automotive estimates that there were 1.2 million in 2022, up about 5.3% from 2021 but still down from 1.68 million in 2019. The Repossessors Summit made its debut in 2009, when there were a record 1.77 million repossessions. – Bloomberg