San Jose Mercury News, "Honda lending bias reported; Study: Blacks Paid More for Car Loans"

          American Honda Finance discriminated against African-American and Latino car buyers from 1999 to 2003 by allowing Honda dealers to charge them higher car loan costs than they charged comparable white buyers, according to a study by a Vanderbilt University business professor. American Honda Motor, of Torrance, denied the allegations in a statement issued Tuesday on behalf of its lending subsidiary, American Honda Finance.
          In recent years, dealer markups -- the percentage points a car dealer adds to a customer's approved loan interest rate -- have come under increased scrutiny from consumer advocates. They claim the rate increases are subjective and used disproportionately against blacks, Hispanics, people with limited education and those with bad credit.
          Mark A. Cohen, the senior associate dean of the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tenn., reached his finding after examining loan records for 383,652 Honda customers nationwide. Attorneys for black plaintiffs in Tennessee, who are suing Honda, commissioned the report.
          San Francisco attorney Bill Lann Lee, the former U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights, announced Tuesday that he would submit Cohen's findings as evidence in a California lawsuit against Honda filed on behalf of black and Hispanic car buyers. While many consumers think their car loan rates are based strictly on their creditworthiness, arbitrary dealer markups can easily add $1,000 to the cost of a car loan.