I use Quickbooks. I made a down payment directly to car company on a vehicle that was financed. What account does this down payment apply to? Is it just an expense or would it be a liability account?

You purchased a car, an asset. The entire price on the car (including sales taxes, document fees, etc.) is recorded in the asset account. The down payment is coming out of your cash and the balance has to end up in a note payable. Somehow you have to get the whole cost of the car in there and the payable.

I don't use Quickbooks, but in Peachtree I would be able to do this by entering the check (which the system will automatically credit), then debiting the whole cost of the car, and since it only allows me to do debits for payments, I'd enter the liability as a negative number. And a negative debit flips it to a credit. That may work in Quickbooks as well.

If not, you'll have to do an adjusting entry to get the portion of the car that was a liability into the system. But the entire car cost has to get into that asset account.

The only thing that might be expensed is if, for instance, you had to pay current registration fees pro-rated to your renewal date. i.e. it renews in November and you just had to pay two month's worth. That's cause that's a separate renewable item and not really part of the cost of getting the car. (But I don't know if that's ever paid to the dealership.)