Your PA car dealers in Conshohocken and other nearby cities want to warn drivers that the repo man is out and he’s in full force. With the recent economic crisis and other factors, many car owners are foregoing their car payments in order to pay other bills.

This particular story takes place in nearby New Hampshire. People can’t make their auto loan payments lately and they are getting their vehicles repossessed. In the last two years, the repo rate has slowly increased. Fortunately, many banks and financing companies are also being more lenient with their customers to afford them extended opportunities to make payments.

That makes financial sense, though. Banks need these payments whether they are late or on-time. If they repossess the cars, they have a used car that has depreciated and no money coming in.

In terms of numbers, repossessions nationwide increased about 10 percent between 2006 and 2007. That means about 1.5 million cars were taken out of driveways in 2007, according to Thomas Webb, a chief economist. Webb also predicted that number would go up by another 10 percent once all of the 2008 figures are in.

The moral of the story is this: Go ahead and finance that new or used car with your local Toyota dealer. Just be sure you have plenty of money to make the payments on it before signing on that dotted line.