Drawing on trade publications, contemporaneous newspaper stories, and other historical sources from the early twentieth-century United States, this article explains how installment plans overcame moral and business concerns to become the standard way people bought cars. Prominent figures in the automobile industry and financial institutions initially denounced the idea of selling cars on credit, and many banks declined to extend credit to would-be auto buyers. However, the relevant legal infrastructure heavily favored creditors, allowing them to circumvent usury laws and guaranteeing their right to repossess assets if borrowers missed payments. When the profit-making that these aspects of the law enabled became clear, moral objections to the idea of selling cars on credit yielded to a new moral consensus among powerful actors that valorized buying cars on credit and concentrated disapprobation on just those borrowers who defaulted on their payments. Thus, the characteristics of the legal infrastructure functionally presupposed the resolution of the erstwhile debate about the fundamental morality of selling cars on credit. Ultimately, lending practices building on the legal and moral foundation established in the early twentieth century led to the establishment of subprime auto lenders whose business model revolves around exorbitant interest rates, high fees, and aggressive repossession.

中文翻译：

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信用卡汽车：或者我如何学会停止担忧并热爱汽车贷款

本文借鉴贸易出版物、同时期报纸报道和二十世纪初美国的其他历史资料，解释了分期付款计划如何克服道德和商业问题，成为人们购买汽车的标准方式。汽车行业和金融机构的知名人士最初谴责了信贷销售汽车的想法，许多银行拒绝向潜在的汽车购买者提供信贷。然而，相关的法律基础设施严重偏向债权人，使他们能够规避高利贷法，并保证在借款人未能还款时收回资产的权利。当法律的这些方面所带来的利润变得清晰时，对信贷销售汽车想法的道德反对在强大的行为者之间产生了新的道德共识，这些行为者重视信贷购买汽车，并将不满集中在那些拖欠贷款的借款人身上。他们的付款。因此，法律基础设施的特征在功能上以解决过去有关赊销汽车基本道德的争论为前提。最终，建立在二十世纪初建立的法律和道德基础上的贷款实践导致了次级汽车贷款机构的成立，其商业模式围绕着过高的利率、高额费用和激进的收回。