Ontario car loan statistics, 2026: the verified numbers.

Car loan statistics for Canada and Ontario are scattered across paywalled reports and quarterly press releases, so Ontario Car Financing maintains this single reference page and refreshes it as Equifax Canada, AutoTrader, and Statistics Canada publish new data. I'm Tim Phillips, a former dealership F&I manager in the GTA, and I compiled every number here from the primary reports myself. At the finance desk, I watched buyers make five-figure decisions with zero market context, and the question I got most often was never about interest rates. It was "is this payment normal?" As of Q2 2026 there is finally a clean answer to that, and it is on this page.

A quick definition before the numbers: a subprime auto loan is financing extended to a borrower with a credit score roughly below 620, priced higher to offset lender risk, and in Canada every rate on every tier is bounded by the federal 35 percent APR criminal-interest cap in force since January 1, 2025. Ontario Car Financing labels a figure VERIFIED when it comes directly from a primary or dated reputable source, and marks it as an estimate or a range when it aggregates dealer and broker pricing. If you want these numbers applied to your own budget, run them through the payment calculator, or start with the average car payment in Canada and work out where your file lands against it.

What is the average car payment in Canada?

The average monthly car payment in Canada was $935 on a new vehicle and $640 on a used vehicle in Q2 2026, according to the AutoTrader Price Index. New-vehicle payments fell 2.2 percent year over year, coming off last year's peak, while used-vehicle payments rose 0.9 percent year over year. That divergence is the single most useful fact on this page: the two halves of the market are moving in opposite directions, and the used side, which is where most bruised-credit buyers shop, is the side still getting more expensive to carry each month.

Treat both figures as market averages, not targets. An average blends every credit tier, term length, down payment, and vehicle age into one number, so it tells you what the middle of the market looks like and nothing at all about what you should be paying. The full breakdown of what the average hides is in the average car payment guide.

What does the average car cost in Canada?

The average used vehicle in Canada listed at $36,690 in Q2 2026, down 2.6 percent year over year, while the average new vehicle listed at just over $63,000, down 2.2 percent year over year, according to the AutoTrader Price Index for Q2 2026. Used electric vehicles ran against the grain, with prices up 0.4 percent year over year while the broader used market softened.

One caution on reading that used number against older figures on this page: AutoTrader's year-end 2025 average used price was $35,201 and the Q3 2025 figure was $36,911, so the series moves between quarters. The Q2 2026 price of $36,690 is compared against Q2 2025, the same quarter a year earlier, not against year-end. Used prices were genuinely volatile through 2025 amid tariff uncertainty, rising in the first half of the year before easing, which is exactly why comparing two different quarters produces a misleading answer.

Sales volumes softened alongside prices. Used vehicle sales were down an estimated 2.5 percent year over year in Q2 2026, and new vehicle sales down 1.3 percent, according to DesRosiers Automotive Consultants figures published in July 2026, with both segments posting gains in June. For historical context, the average new vehicle listed at $63,439 at year-end 2025, down 2.7 percent, and the average used vehicle at $35,201, up 2.0 percent, per the AutoTrader Price Index for Q4 2025.

How big is the average car loan in Canada?

The average new auto loan in Canada reached $35,586 in Q2 2025, up $1,567 year over year, according to Equifax Canada, which attributed the increase to rising vehicle prices. That remains the most recent published average loan size verified for this page. Auto loan debt grew 7.7 percent year over year as of Equifax's Q3 2025 report, outpacing credit-card growth of about 4 percent, and new auto loan volumes rose 4.8 percent year over year in Q3 2025. Equifax noted then that origination growth was concentrated among low-risk, prime borrowers as lenders tightened approval criteria, a pattern that sharpened considerably by Q1 2026.

Tim's read: a $35,586 average balance means the loan, not the car, is the biggest negotiation in the room. On a balance that size, a couple of points of rate markup is worth thousands of dollars to the desk, which is exactly why the payment is the distraction and the total cost is the truth.

What are car loan interest rates in Canada right now?

The national average car-loan rate was approximately 6.5 percent as of October 2025, per rate aggregators Finder Canada and Chexy (VERIFIED as a dated national average). The hard legal ceiling is 35 percent APR, including most fees, under the Criminal Code and the Criminal Interest Rate Regulations SOR/2024-114, in force since January 1, 2025, with no exemption for car loans.

Rates by credit tier are dealer and broker aggregates, so treat the following strictly as ESTIMATE ranges that vary by lender, term, and vehicle age: prime borrowers (roughly 670+) typically see about 5 to 9 percent, near-prime (roughly 620 to 669) about 9 to 15 percent, and subprime (below about 620) roughly 11 to 30 percent or more, capped at the 35 percent legal maximum.

Are lenders pulling back from auto loans?

The origination data says yes, at the top of the market. New captive auto loans, meaning financing written through the manufacturers' own finance arms, fell nearly 5 percent year over year in Q1 2026 to a three-year low, according to Equifax Canada. Bank instalment loan volumes dropped 9.5 percent over the same period. Equifax's Q1 2026 release also recorded the first decline in non-mortgage debt in several quarters, with balances falling by more than $487 million.

Alongside that, the AutoTrader Q2 2026 report describes affordability as the dominant driver in the market, with weaker demand concentrated among subprime buyers while prime consumers continued to purchase at higher levels than the year before.

What is the car loan delinquency rate in Canada?

Delinquency kept climbing into 2026. Equifax Canada's Q1 2026 report, published May 26, 2026, showed the national 90+ day delinquency balance up 4.18 percent year over year and delinquency volume up 2.38 percent. Insolvency volumes rose 18.8 percent year over year, with homeowner insolvencies up 11 percent over Q4 2025.

Ontario specifically: the province's 90+ day delinquency balance stood at 1.92 percent in Q1 2026, up 9.08 percent year over year, per Equifax. Ontario mortgage delinquencies were up 52 percent year over year over the same period, which is not auto-specific but tells you how much strain the average Ontario household budget is carrying before a car payment is added to it.

The age picture has split. In Q1 2026, borrowers aged 18 to 25 carried a 90+ day balance delinquency rate of 2.18 percent, an improvement of 2.16 percent year over year, while borrowers aged 26 to 35 sat at 2.64 percent, up 6.75 percent year over year. That divergence refines the older single figure for under-36 borrowers, which Equifax put at 2.35 percent in Q3 2025 against a national 90+ day non-mortgage rate of 1.63 percent, up about 14 percent year over year. Where the younger cohort is improving, the 26 to 35 band, the group most likely to be carrying a first mortgage and a car loan at once, is getting worse.

In my experience, delinquency rarely starts with the payment itself; it starts with a loan structured too long and too big on day one. If you're already behind, the After You Sign guide covers your options and your rights before a repossession is on the table.

How common are 84-month and longer car loans?

Loans of 84 months or longer made up 12.8 percent of new-vehicle financing in March 2025, nearly double the 7.3 percent share of March 2019, according to J.D. Power. The same J.D. Power reporting notes 72-month terms now account for roughly 40 percent of financed purchases. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) has flagged longer amortizations as raising the risk of buried negative equity and application fraud in its Auto Finance: Market Trends research.

The long term is the desk's favourite lever because it buys a small payment with years of extra interest. That is also why the payment averages above need reading with care: a falling average payment can mean cheaper cars, or it can mean longer terms. The full worked math on what 72 versus 48 months costs on a real Ontario loan is in The Real Math.

How many trade-ins have negative equity?

Twenty-six percent of used-vehicle trade-ins carried negative equity in 2025, up from 24 percent in 2024, according to J.D. Power. J.D. Power also estimates that borrowers on 96-month loans are roughly $9,000 underwater around year four, at the point when standard-term borrowers begin building positive equity, and warns that the combination of long terms and negative equity is setting up what it calls a possible "day of reckoning" for the market.

Household debt, insolvencies, and auto fraud

Total Canadian consumer debt reached $2.66 trillion in Q1 2026, up 3.8 percent year over year, according to Equifax Canada. Within that, non-mortgage debt fell by more than $487 million, the first decline in several quarters, which Equifax framed as consumers leaning on financial discipline against macroeconomic pressure. Insolvency volumes still rose 18.8 percent year over year. For longer-run context, Canada's household debt-to-disposable-income ratio reached 177.2 percent in Q4 2025, its fifth straight quarterly rise, meaning $1.77 of credit-market debt for every dollar of disposable income, according to Statistics Canada's National Balance Sheet Accounts.

Fraud is climbing with the pressure. Equifax Canada's Q3 2025 report describes an escalating threat from synthetic-identity fraud and auto-loan "stacking," estimating this fraud type accounted for about one third of auto loans over $10,000 opened in January 2025 that missed payments by Q3, contributing to an estimated $450 million in annual losses for auto lenders. Equifax has separately reported automotive fraud, largely falsified applications, up roughly 54 percent year over year. FCAC likewise flags "soft fraud," inflated income or understated housing costs on applications, as increasingly common. If a dealer or broker ever suggests adjusting your stated income to get an approval, walk: that risk lands on you, not them. The Before You Sign guide covers the paperwork red flags.

Summary table: Canadian auto loan statistics at a glance

Sources: Equifax Canada, "The Resilient North" consumer credit trends release for Q1 2026 (published May 26, 2026) and Consumer Trends Reports Q1-Q3 2025; AutoTrader Price Index Q2 2026, with sales volumes credited to DesRosiers Automotive Consultants (July 2026), plus Q3-Q4 2025; J.D. Power affordability research 2025; FCAC Auto Finance: Market Trends; Statistics Canada National Balance Sheet Accounts Q4 2025. Rate-tier figures are dealer and broker aggregates presented as ranges only; your quote depends on your file and the lender. Ontario Car Financing does not publish an Ontario-specific average vehicle price, because the regional breakdown in the current AutoTrader report could not be verified to our standard.

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Related reading

• Average car payment in Canada: what $935 and $640 actually mean
• The real math of car loans: APR, total cost, and the term trap
• Ontario car loan rates and costs by credit tier
• How the car financing game works in Ontario
• Bad credit car loans in Ontario: the approval, and the fair price
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