Also, what people fund it with is not either/or, it's both. You want to think that it's all driven by debt, so you'll pluck out statistics to support this. I believe people generally now have more disposable income than they did 20 years ago, hence my ability to find better and better used cars for loose change. I also believe that the availability of cheap credit makes it easier to buy new rather than repair old. None of these observation s exist in a vacuum, they feed off one another. The truth is that a number of things are happening all at the same time, and what drives one consumer may not drive another.