Once upon a time just about anybody could walk into a new car dealership and, with little or no money down and minimal hassle, drive away with a luxury car or SUV that they otherwise couldn’t afford – courtesy of a thriving economy and always-willing auto lenders like GMAC and the national banks.

Lease deals, it seemed, were good for everyone. Consumers got more automobile for their dollar, low monthly payments and a new car every two to four years. Lenders streamlined qualifying criteria and underwriting to fill their pipelines with loans and earned a satisfying return when they packaged and sold them to investors. And dealerships essentially got two deals in one – the lease transaction and the subsequent trade-in sale when the lease expired.

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William Shakespeare probably didn’t have the subprime mortgage crisis in mind when he penned the famous phrase “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” but his words come close to describing the current environment consumers face when seeking financing to buy a home or automobile.

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For many of us, it comes as no surprise that the major new car manufacturers, dealers and institutional lenders like GMAC are eliminating once popular but increasingly unprofitable auto lease programs that put car-buyers into vehicles they couldn’t otherwise afford to purchase. Dealers, banks and manufacturers are getting stuck with turned-in lease vehicles with few interested retail buyers and collapsing wholesale values. While the auto market and housing markets are vastly different, the current lease program problems do mirror the current housing market crisis in several key respects: with homes no longer worth what homeowners paid for them and the secondary market in turmoil, troubled lenders have eliminated most of the low-cost, low-down financing programs that during the real estate boom helped American families qualify to buy homes they couldn’t otherwise afford at terms they could not afford to pass up.

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Last fall, a survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers revealed that one-third were worried that the subprime mortgage crisis eventually would spill over into other market sectors and negatively affect their ability to obtain various forms of consumer credit, including auto loans.

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Ask independent auto dealers what keeps them awake at night and you’ll get an earful.

Time after time as I criss-crossed the country over the past year talking to dealers and financial institutions about GDNAuto, the first dealer-focused automobile loan portfolio transaction system, people told me how difficult it is to operate a financially viable dealership in the current business environment.

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If you think the subprime mortgage crisis created problems for the U.S. economy, get ready for the sequel.

Slower job and wage growth. Gasoline prices on a non-stop climb. A credit crunch that has caused banks to hoard cash as insurance against potential losses on securities backed by subprime and other mortgages. Economists fear these economic ills may carry over into 2009, when a second wave of disruption is expected to take hold as Option ARM mortgages originated during the last gasps of the real estate boom begin to re-set.

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When the economy is booming, everyone wants to finance new car purchases. And why not? New car buyers tend to be prime customers. They bring high credit scores and repeat business.

That is, until the economy sours and gas prices soar. That’s when prime buyers join the legions of non-prime car buyers who collectively purchase an estimated 8 million used cars a year – a number that is likely to grow as mortgage and other credit default rates increase and ever greater numbers of car owners decide to trade in their gas guzzler for one with a more affordable monthly payment.

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