Following is the latest Black Book pricing data on the used-car market. Additional analysis and chart information can be found here.

It was an interesting week regarding the market values. Sure the softening trend continued. The car segments were overall at very close to the level of the previous 4 weeks, at -$31 this past week. The lone increasing segment in the cars was the Premium Sporty Cars (PSC) at +$12. One segment had a significantly higher decline in value for the week. That segment was the Entry Level Cars (ELC) at a change of -$80. This was the largest declining amount of any segment for a weekly period since the week ending April 27, when coincidentally, it was the Premium Sporty Cars (PSC), the lone increasing segment this past week, which declined by $96.

As we turn to the truck segments, they took a larger step downward to a segment average change of -$60. The Mid-size Crossovers (MXU) declined by $87, while the Full-size Pickups (FPT) and the Full-size SUVs (FSU) declined by $82 each. A year ago the trucks declined less than half of this weekly average change amount at only -$25. The last period where the trucks declined greater than the current period was the week ending September 16, 2011, at a clip of -$69.

The price of fuel sure cannot be blamed as the driver of the truck softness as the price at the pump continued its steady decline dropping another 4 cents week over week. This is now 10 consecutive weeks of declining pump prices. We are at the point of being on $.27 higher today than when the calendar turned to 2012.

All of these resulting values and changes were comprised from the average 2550 vehicles adjusted each day throughout the last week. The very minute 10% of the adjustments that were increases in value during the week was the lowest level of positive changes since the week ending August 26, 2011 with a 10% increasing level as well.

Some interesting notes as we attended the auctions and received quite a bit of dealer insight, something you can’t pick up from a data feeds, but you can hear while being in the lanes, was that the number of “if sales”, where the seller just couldn’t pull the trigger as the high bid was close to his/her floor, but just not close enough for an instant selling decision, actually declined. The decline in “if sales” actually slid over to the on the spot “no sales” category where the percentage went up.

Another trend was the number of comments related to the rental cars being remarketed. There has been a slight increase in the number being offered as some of the retail rental business has not been as aggressive as the agencies had hoped for. We also noticed the higher level of no sales within this segment of the market, possibly driven by these higher mileage level units just not getting the interest and demand hoped for by the sellers.

The longest day of the year comes this week. That means more opportunities for interested buyers to roam your lots while looking for just the right used vehicle. We hope the auction offerings have provided the right vehicles and the Black Book Daily Values on your mobile app, the best guidelines as to how much to put into the key inventory on your lot. We hope you will tune next week for another update on the market. Until then maybe we will see you on the auction lanes. Have a great week!