No it sounds like she got a shitty interest rate and it never occurred to her that said interest rate would mean paying just interest for years before touching the principal. Something around a 15% interest rate with no money down would probably give her that result. And yeah that’s very much an offer a credit lender will make when they know they can repo the car for extra profit when the borrower defaults. The car has to be insured. The lender literally cannot lose.

Here’s a Consumer Reports article cited by Vox. It’s got a few examples to help substantiate the claims it’s making.