Auto Finance News 2013

Auto Finance News is the leading source of information and insight on the Auto Finance industry. First published in 1996 as a very basic newsletter, the informational format began as a pure newsletter and has evolved over time into a more magazine-like trade publication.

In 2013, with the worst of the recession in the rear view mirror, the public’s appetite for new cars began to accelerate. With four years of slow sales, the average age of vehicles in the United States reached an all time high of 11.4 years – higher even than the immediate post-ww2 era when car production had been entirely suspended for almost four years. Meanwhile, due to the constricted supply, used car values were artificially high – making new cars, with their long warrantys, newer designs, and friendlier financing terms, even more attractive. Auto Finance News devoted heavy coverage to the revived market for cars and the accompanying financial dealings – the buoyant Automotive asset-backed-securities market, the new ways lenders were re-inventing their support systems to keep up, and the new features and concepts they were trying out to lure in buyers and make the financing experience more customer friendly. For the first time, Lender’s run-ins with the CFPB, and how they resolved consumer disputes, were also cataloged.

Below are several covers from 2013. At the time these were created, Auto Finance News was in the process of changing from a bi-weekly publication to a monthly title. Auto Finance News required twelve regular covers a year, each illustrating completely new, often breaking, stories and – for the first time – additional covers for special tech-focused supplements. The internal, news-focused format of AFN has remained largely unchanged over the years.