'Not Just Toyota:' Orlando Car Dealer Says Repo Lots Are Full of Recent, Low-Mileage Toyotas. Here’s How To Score a Deal

• Toyota

An Orlando car dealer's blunt tour through a vehicle repossession lot exposed a troubling trend in American car buying habits.

What he found might surprise you and potentially save you money if you're shopping for a used car. But it also reveals a deeper crisis brewing in the auto lending industry that's affecting millions of Americans nationwide.

Why Does Toyota Repossess so Many Cars?

In a viral video with more than 72,000 views, a car dealer named Robb (@robbthecarguy) took viewers on an eye-opening tour of a Toyota repossession lot, revealing the staggering number of nearly-new vehicles being reclaimed by lenders.

"Toyota has the most repos in the country," Robb says as he showed rows upon rows of repossessed vehicles. "Look, everything behind me is a Toyota repo… this is every week."

Robb emphasizes that this isn't an occasional occurrence, but a regular pattern he witnesses multiple times per week at different auctions.

The vehicles he showcases tell a sobering story of financial overextension: a 2024 model with just 12,000 miles, another with only 5,000 miles that hadn't even required its first service, and most shocking of all, a 2024 with just 2,000 miles.

"You didn't even get a paycheck before they repossessed this," Robb says. "They wasn't playing with you. They found it fast. They picked it up fast."

One particularly heartbreaking example was a 2025 van with 20,000 miles that Robb speculated had been used for family trips. 

"They probably took their kids to Disney and Toyota picked it up right in the Disney parking lot," he says, noting the van likely had monthly payments of $1,000 to $1,500.

The dealer doesn’t sugarcoat his thoughts about why people’s cars are getting repossessed.

"Truth is it's your fault your car got repossessed. You bought something you couldn't afford." 

He describes a familiar cycle where buyers with paid-off vehicles trade up for something flashy they saw on social media, only to lose the car within months due to unaffordable payments.

While Toyota repos dominated the lot, Robb clarifies that the problem extends across all manufacturers. 

"It's not just Toyota," he says. "It's Honda, GMC, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Truist, Chase. Everybody's [expletive] is getting repoed."

America’s Repo Crisis

What Robb is witnessing in Orlando reflects a much larger national crisis. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) crunched the numbers and found that car repossessions have blown past pre-pandemic levels. Nearly 1% of all car loans were sent to repo in December 2022, which is a 22.5% jump from 2019.

And it's getting worse. A Cox Automotive report that CNBC covered shows car repos shot up 23% in 2024 compared to the year before. That's also 14% higher than 2019, back when we thought the economy was doing pretty well. 

"Supply chain shocks and higher interest rates drove up costs to purchase and finance a car," CFPB Director Rohit Chopra explained.

The Real Cost of Getting Your Car Repossessed

The financial hit doesn't go away with the tow truck. The CFPB found that consumers who had outstanding balances after repossession owed an average of more than $11,000 in December 2022, up from over $10,000 in 2019. 

That means even after losing their car, people are still stuck with massive debt.

Making matters worse, the CFPB discovered that lenders increasingly use third-party "forwarders" to handle repossessions, jumping from 31% in 2018 to 66% in 2022. These middlemen typically charge consumers higher fees, adding insult to financial injury.

Beyond the money, repossession destroys credit scores and often eliminates people's primary transportation to work, creating a cycle that's incredibly difficult to escape. 

The debt is exacerbated by ballooning interest rates. Car loan interest rates have hit some of their highest levels in recent memory, with Edmunds reporting rates of 11.5% for new vehicles and 7.3% for used cars as of June 2024. Higher rates naturally make loans more expensive and harder to maintain, especially when combined with inflated vehicle prices.

Is It a Sign of a Looming Recession?

Robb’s post had people questioning the country’s economic health as well as the cost of Toyotas.

“Nobody should [be] paying 1,000 a month for a Toyota lol,” a top comment reads.

“I think this is another recession indicator,” a second speculated.

“[Cause] they want 40k for a 2021 Toyota camry…” another wrote.

Motor1 reached out to Robb for comment via email and TikTok direct message. We'll update this if he responds.