Being a music aficionado and chief economist, Cox Automotive’s Jonathan Smoke could have included some woeful blues tracks when he highlighted six points about the current performance of auto financing in his Auto Market Weekly Summary.

While not mentioning songs like “Crying Time Again,” by Son Seals, Smoke acknowledged auto-loan performance deteriorated in June, as both delinquencies and defaults increased.

According to Cox Automotive tracking, 60-day delinquencies rose 1.9% month-over-month and 1.6% year-over-year.

And like a melancholy guitar riff, Smoke noted what he deemed to be the severe delinquency rate ticked up to 1.87% in June, up from 1.84% in May and 1.81% a year ago.

While slightly lower than a year ago, Cox Automotive indicated severe subprime delinquencies jumped to 6.92% from 6.81% in May. A year ago, Smoke said they sat at 6.94%.

Perhaps what might make finance companies really sing the blues, Smoke reported defaults rose 17.2% month-over-month and 3.7% year-over-year.

Looking closer at subprime defaults in June, Smoke indicated they increased 21.4% month-over-month but remained steady compared to last year.

Finally, Smoke closed by mentioning the annualized default rate reached 3.07%, which was 45 basis points higher than May, 15 basis points higher than last year, and 59 basis points higher than May 2019.

Is it “crying time again” at your finance company?