For those high risk car buyers, we now have the programmable kill switch:

A new gizmo is upping the odds that even the most hard-knock customer will come up with the car payment. Hooked into the ignition system, the gadget comes in a handful of versions with one common conclusion: No pay, no start.

And it works:

Not surprisingly, default rates are high. It's not unusual for more than a third of the cars sold off such lots to wind up being repossessed. Since Patriot began using PayTeck three years ago, its repos have dropped from about 45% to less than 15%. Madden figures he has close to 500 of the $200 units on the road -- an investment that has not only cut repos but boosted business.

This is only being used for high risk sales, sounds like. Makes me wonder about systems like OnStar a bit - put that kind of remote capability together with this kind of policy...