Several top industry players came to the defense of how subprime vehicle financing is operating nowadays after the unflattering picture they said The New York Times painted in an article a couple of weeks ago that’s since made its way around board rooms, quarterly conference calls and beyond.

American Financial Services Association president and chief executive officer Chris Stinebert even went to the lengths of sending a letter to the editor, rebuffing the insinuations that subprime auto financing is creating a bubble similar to what burst in the mortgage space and sent the U.S. economy into a deep recession.

“Autos are essential for many people, whether for transportation to work or medical appointments. Consumers from all walks of life and parts of the credit spectrum need access to affordable credit to be able to meet their needs,” Stinebert wrote.

“An increase in subprime loans means that more working class Americans have transportation when that could be the difference between having a job or not,” he continued.

During the company’s quarterly conference call earlier this week, Ally Financial chief executive officer Michael Carpenter said the newspaper piece evidently brought federal regulators to the finance company’s doors again. At the end of last year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Justice reached the largest-ever auto loan discrimination settlement with Ally.

“We’ve had a lot of people talking to us about that New York Times article, including obviously our regulators,” Carpenter said. “I would say in very simple terms, that article does not describe the nature of the business that we are in and does not describe the way in which we run our business.”

Consumer Portfolio Services chairman and CEO Brad Bradley also insisted subprime vehicle financing isn’t behaving to the point the newspaper tried to show.

“If you actually looked at the numbers at this point, the auto industry is now almost back to where it was in ’07. It's not like the industry is growing out of control or anything like that, which they sort of tried to imply, much like the mortgage mess,” Bradley said.

“They were nice enough to point out that the auto industry is, as wonderful as it may be, isn't probably 1/100th the size of the mortgage deal. So it would be very hard to even associate the two,” he continued.

Bradley referenced some of the broad industry figures Stinebert articulated in his letter to the newspaper such as Experian Automotive data that indicates a gradual rise in subprime vehicle loans during the past five years. Furthermore, the S&P/Experian Consumer Credit Default Indices showed that the auto loan default rate hit a historic low in April at 0.92 percent while 30-day delinquencies are at their lowest level since 2007.

“We’ve only really gotten back as an industry to where we were in sort of ’06, ’07, so it's not like the things are growing like crazy. We're just recovering like most any other industry,” Bradley said.

“The fact that the mortgage industry is sort of on its back a bit and there's a lot more spotlight on auto because it is a large industry, I think that's really the way to look at it. It is a large industry, it is a place where a lot of Wall Street money is going to find a home. And in fact, that is maybe — as everyone has watched over the last two years — has caused our industry to recover faster than many,” he went on to say.

While the industry is growing, Stinebert closed his message to The New York Times by insisting that regulatory compliance is paramount.

“AFSA and its members believe that all fraud is inexcusable,” Stinebert said. “The examples of fraud highlighted in the article underscore the need for lenders to maintain strong compliance management systems to weed out bad actors and promptly address any instances of illegal behavior. Many lenders already have these systems in place.”