Mercury Finance, an auto lender that specializes in lower-quality borrowers, said yesterday that its No. 2 official, who supervised the company's accounting policies, had vanished after accounting irregularities were discovered.

For instance, the skill with which an auto lender handles payment collection, repossession and resales can have a substantial impact on margins.

Today, Capital One Auto Finance is the third-largest auto lender in the country.

It's about holding unscrupulous credit providers, be they payday lenders or auto lenders, accountable - so that they can't trap customers with misleading terms buried in the fine print.

But under a so-called cram-down provision that was woven into the code, secured creditors like auto lenders get a big advantage in collecting Chapter 13 bankruptcy debts.

But executives at other subprime auto lenders say it isn't easy to make money.

The defendants assert that the department's position is a sharp departure from earlier government views on the responsibilities of auto lenders and car dealers under fair-credit laws.

Far from being in control of what the dealers do, she said, every auto lender is competing fiercely for each dealer's new loans.

Typical requirements include mandating that auto lenders provide consumers with opportunities to either "reinstate" or "redeem" their purchase or lease contracts after their vehicles have been repossessed.

Nissan, like other auto lenders, lets car dealers make the final decision about how much customers pay for loans.