GMAC Car Loans

General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) is one of America’s leading car loans providers. As a subsidiary of General Motors Company, GMAC holds the reputation of good service backed up by an established company name. This is why it’s such a shock when in a report filed in the past year, it has been found that the number of African Americans charged with markups on GMAC car loans was almost three times as much as whites.

According to an analytical report by an expert who works for minority borrowers, GMAC charged more markups on car loans by African Americans than by whites. The report was filed in a lawsuit against the nation’s second-largest auto lender.

A markup charge is a higher-than-normal interest rate so with car loan markup charge black borrowers charged paid an average of $1,229 in extra interest over the life of the GMAC car loans. This is $362 higher than the average $867 paid by whites to GMAC. The numbers are a result of a study of more than 1.5 million GMAC car loans made between 1999 and April of 2003.

According to the same study, black postal workers paid an average of $811 more than white postal workers in order to get GMAC car loans. Black teachers paid an average amount of $595 more than white teachers. Even black GMAC employees weren’t spared when they applied for their car loans. Vanderbilt University business professor Mark A. Cohen submitted his report, saying that black employees at General Motors paid more than their white counterparts. Cohen wrote in his report that the difference against African Americans “cannot be explained by credit worthiness or other legitimate business factors.

GMAC spokesman James Farmer said that the company does not require nor ask for the borrower’s race in their car loan applications. He further stated that they have reviewed Cohen’s report but refused to comment on it until after their lawyers question Cohen about percentages and dollar amounts paid which they don’t understand.

The report found that the differences in markup prices of GMAC car loans occur nationwide though the charges vary from state to state. In Wisconsin, one can see the biggest difference. Blacks paid five times more than whites in loan markups. California comes off the state where the difference is not that sharp, yet it’s still there.

There were many more discrepancies in GMAC car loans that Cohen discovered and outlined in his reports. For instance, only a few percentages of blacks get preferential interest rates while a large percentage of whites enjoy interest-free percent loans and other special financing incentives.

This summer, the state of California passed a law that requires auto dealers to keep sales records on how credit worthiness was determined. According to Rosemary Shahan, president of California-based Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, this was their “message to the industry that these practices don’t stand up to scrutiny and it should clean up its act.”