Mapped: The Cities in America That Overspend the Most on Cars

America has one of the highest rates of car ownership in the world. For a country of just over 340 million people, the U.S. is home to a staggering 278 million vehicles, with over 90 percent of American households owning at least one car. (In fact, worldwide, only New Zealand has a greater quantity of car ownership per capita.)

But America’s automobile love affair comes at something of a cost. Although the auto market overall continues to fare relatively well, the amount Americans spend on keeping their cars on the road remains eye-wateringly high: Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggests that America’s total outstanding auto-loan balances increased by $13 billion in the second quarter of 2025 alone. And now, a new analysis from finance and economy website WalletHub has unearthed precisely which cities come out on top (or rather, bottom) in sharing that financial burden. 

1. The Cities With the Highest Car Loan Debt
2. The Cities With the Lowest Car Loan Debt
3. City by City Data, Mapped

The Cities With the Highest Car Loan Debt

The survey’s authors collated car finance data from 2530 cities across the United States, dividing the median car-loan debt in each one by the average income of its residents, as per financial and employment data from TransUnion and the U.S. Census Bureau.

With the numbers crunched, Rio Grande, Texas, was crowned the city where Americans most overspend on car ownership.

The data showed that the median auto loan debt in Rio Grande is $32,173 on average, while the median income in the city is just $33,782—giving it a debt-to-income ratio of 95 percent, the highest in the entire country by quite a significant margin.

Northglenn, Colorado, came in second in the survey. The city was a full five percentage points behind Rio Grande; it had a far higher average auto debt of $50,124, but a higher median wage of $55,715, for a score of 90 percent overall.

In a close third place in the survey, Donna, Texas, scored 89 percent, with an average auto debt of $27,828 set against a median income of $31,203.

There were a number of Texas cities in the WalletHub data: Mercedes (85 percent debt-to-income; fourth place), San Juan (76 percent; seventh place), San Benito (71 percent; eighth place), and Uvalde (69 percent; 10th place) all made the Top 10. Eagle Pass (68 percent), Pharr (67 percent), Alice (67 percent), Brownsville (66 percent), Marshall (64 percent), Paris (64 percent), and Laredo (64 percent) were in the Top 20 (factoring in ties), and 22 Texan cities were among the 37 cities to be ranked in the study’s top 1 percentile when it came to auto debt.

Other states with multiple cities at this end of the data include Mississippi, with four cities (Laurel, Vicksburg, Lucedale, and Brookhaven) among those in the top 1 percent, followed by Florida with three (Quincy, Live Oak, Arcadia), and Georgia (Jackson and Douglas) and Louisiana (Bastrop and Abbeville) with two apiece. 

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The Cities With the Lowest Car Loan Debt

At the opposite end of the data, meanwhile, Scarsdale in New York—recently crowned America’s wealthiest suburb for the second year in a row—fared the best overall in the entire United States. There, the average auto debt was a relatively low $19,731, set against an average income of $242,969 (the highest in the study), yielding a debt-to-income ratio of just 8 percent.

This wasn’t the smallest auto debt the survey uncovered, however; the average figure outstanding in Laguna Woods, California, is just $11,148 (although its debt-to-income score was higher, at 17 percent).

City by City Data, Mapped

Hover over the map for a closer look at the data.

To find out how your local town or city fares in the survey—or for more on the survey’s data and methodology—head to the WalletHub blog here.