How strong is subprime?

Experian Automotive shed a bit of light on this in a recent analysis detailing just how much momentum the subprime finance sector gained during the first quarter.

According to its State of the Automotive Finance Market report, Experian found that the market share for finance companies — lenders such as Santander Consumer USA and Credit Acceptance — rose 5.1 percent from a year ago to 15.5 percent of the entire market.

Meanwhile, Experian found that buy-here, pay-here financing softened 6.4 percent year-over-year, settling at a 10.7 percent market share.

All told, Experian indicated loans going to consumers with credit outside of prime (nonprime, subprime and deep subprime) jumped to 45.2 percent of the overall loan market in Q1, up from 44.4 percent in Q1 2012.

For new vehicles, the share of these loans jumped to 25.1 percent in Q1 from 23.2 percent in Q1 of last year.

For used vehicles, nonprime, subprime and deep subprime loans accounted for 57.7 percent market share in Q1 2013, up from 56.8 percent in Q1 a year ago.

In other trends:

—The average credit score for a new-vehicle loan dropped to 755 in Q1 2013, down from 760 in Q1 2012

—The average credit score for a used-vehicle loan dropped to 657 in Q1 2013, down from 659 in Q1 2012

—Banks had 39.5 percent market share, down 1.7 percent from Q1 2012

—Captive finance companies had 17.3 percent market share, up 3.4 percent from Q1 2012

—Credit unions had 16.7 percent market share, up 0.4 percent from Q1 2012