The banks need to loosen up. That's the message from a month's worth of interviews with consumers and automobile dealers nationwide. It's also the conclusion of a new study by Accenture, a global management consulting company.

The banks need to be less stingy with credit. That would do as much to help the struggling automobile industry as the latest government bailout.

Tight credit is strangling the industry, putting suppliers, dealers and consumers at risk.

It's not so much that consumers are on strike as it is many of them strike out on their applications for consumer credit, said Frank Maione, owner of the Henderson Hyundai Superstore in Nevada.

"It's screwing up our write-to-roll ratio," Maione said, using industry parlance to describe the difference between writing a sales contract and getting it financed, allowing the customer to roll the car off the lot.

"Half of the people who sign contracts with us can't get them financed; or, they can't get the financing for the car they came in to buy," he said. "It's a killer."

I heard the same complaint in Warren and Washington. Contrary to conventional media wisdom, people are visiting showrooms, despite the economy.

That includes showrooms supplied by Chrysler, which is reorganizing its operations under the protection of a federal bankruptcy court in New York.

"We're open. We're doing business," said Tamara Darvish, vice president of Silver Spring, Md.-based Darcars, which operates 18 stores in the Washington metropolitan area. Darcars handles products from 34 automobile manufacturers, including Chrysler and General Motors.

Accenture has done two online surveys of 504 automotive consumers in the U.S. -- the first in October and the most recent in April. The surveys found that more than half of the respondents -- 64 percent -- ran into credit problems buying a car.

For 34 percent, those credit difficulties meant no new-car purchase. For 30 percent, weakened credit meant rolling off the sales lot in something less than they intended to buy.

"The troubled economy is taking its toll on consumers," sidelining many who have lost jobs or who are worried about becoming unemployed, said Richard Spitzer, managing director of Accenture's division for automotive and industrial equipment. But many more consumers are actively shopping for new cars and trucks. If the banks ease up on credit restrictions, those shoppers could spark a recovery in automobile sales, he said.

Spitzer's argument, supported by many dealers, is that thawed credit would build consumer confidence. Increased consumer confidence would work with pent-up consumer demand to build sales.

U.S. motorists are now holding onto their cars 9.4 years, up from 9.2 years in 2006, 8.3 in 2000 and 7.9 in 1996, according to figures compiled by Michigan-based R.L. Polk, a global automotive marketing research firm.

"There are people out there who want to buy. There are discounts. There is all of that pent-up demand from people who need to, or who want to replace their existing vehicles," he said.