I think I may have found a leak in the modeling for this. I turned on financing for a couple of my marques in the mid 1930s, and then WWII happened (surprise!), stopping car sales. I turned financing off during the war, and post-war had no need for it as my factories where entirely whelmed with pent-up demand for cars, might as well take the revenue now since we can't meet demand anyway.
It's 1960 now, and the customer loan balance is still above zero. It seems that I've been getting about 2% of the funds (with my 48 or 50 month terms) ever since, so while the balance has shrunk a lot, it's still non-zero.
I would have expected this would behave more like the pension system, where each year (month in the financing case) has a timeline, siphoning (contributing) funds each year/month until it's fully addressed and falls off the books. So like with my 48-month loans, theoretically after 48 months it would either all have been paid, paid off early, or defaulted. Simplified, I realize there are deferments and so forth, so maybe it takes an extra year or two, but I shouldn't still have an outstanding balance 18 years after the last loan was issued, it should be written off by then.
Not a big deal for me, I have enough revenues already and am happy to take the money upfront and let outside banks finance it (I also wasn't one of the voters for this bounty). And if someone leaves financing on, which seems likely, they're unlikely to notice this Thought it worth noting though; given enough budget, I'd probably vote for a refinement of the system before the end of 2nd Gear.
(I suppose the other thing to test is, if I set financing to 60 months initially, and then change it to 12 months later, do I start getting 1/12th of the balance per month instead of 1/60th? In theory, that shouldn't affect existing loans)
It's 1960 now, and the customer loan balance is still above zero. It seems that I've been getting about 2% of the funds (with my 48 or 50 month terms) ever since, so while the balance has shrunk a lot, it's still non-zero.
I would have expected this would behave more like the pension system, where each year (month in the financing case) has a timeline, siphoning (contributing) funds each year/month until it's fully addressed and falls off the books. So like with my 48-month loans, theoretically after 48 months it would either all have been paid, paid off early, or defaulted. Simplified, I realize there are deferments and so forth, so maybe it takes an extra year or two, but I shouldn't still have an outstanding balance 18 years after the last loan was issued, it should be written off by then.
Not a big deal for me, I have enough revenues already and am happy to take the money upfront and let outside banks finance it (I also wasn't one of the voters for this bounty). And if someone leaves financing on, which seems likely, they're unlikely to notice this Thought it worth noting though; given enough budget, I'd probably vote for a refinement of the system before the end of 2nd Gear.
(I suppose the other thing to test is, if I set financing to 60 months initially, and then change it to 12 months later, do I start getting 1/12th of the balance per month instead of 1/60th? In theory, that shouldn't affect existing loans)