Here is the latest Used Car Market Report from Ricky Beggs and Black Book. There were definitely some interesting results from the market study and detail analysis. The initial chart I looked at shows the level of change in both percentage of increases and decreases and the average dollar amount of those changes. When I saw 31% increases in the adjustments made during the week I knew we hadn’t had this level of increases in quite some time. It was actually all the way back to the week ending May 17th and at a level of 45% increases. During that time in May there were fewer overall adjustments as well. This past week was the largest number of adjustments at 2380 per day on average since the week ending January 18, 2013 at 2520 per day with 33% of the adjustments being increases.

According to Black Book, Gas and diesel prices at the pump varied less than $.01 during the past week and both gas and diesel are $.08 and $.11 respectively under year ago prices. Even with the spread in price between gas and diesel at $.61 per gallon, used vehicles with diesel power plants continue to bring great returns in relation to the new premium price of the diesel engines.

Earlier we mentioned the 31% of adjustments being increases. This stronger level of increases in adjustments created an interest as to what the overall average segment change was within the cars and trucks. This past week the cars at -$72 was the largest declining amount over the past four weeks. During that stretch of time the Premium Luxury Cars have been larger declines than the segment average. Joining in on the downward decline for eight of the last nine weeks is the Entry Level Car segment. Over the past six weeks the Upper Mid-size Cars are showing most of the smaller declining levels.

Turning over to the trucks, the average segment change has increased each of the past three weeks to -$59 this past week. The Compact SUVs and the Compact Crossovers had the smallest dollar changes at -$19 and -$22 respectively, while the Luxury SUVs at -17% and -$49 had the smallest decline over the past three months. Full-size Pickups at -$35 also had their smallest weekly change over the past five weeks.

Seasonality patterns also get mentioned quite often during this time of the year. Comparing the level of changes this past week to year ago time periods shows a market today at greater depreciation for both the cars and the trucks. In the cars, today’s -$72 was not significantly greater than the 2012 matching period of -$55. The trucks had almost a three times greater decline at -$59 as the -$21 change from one year ago. The Full-size Vans had the biggest swing year over year. In December 2012 the vans increased by $60 and $75 compared to the over -$100 changes from this past week.

So what’s to come for the remainder of 2013? There is no question the volume of cars and trucks changing hands will be way down for the rest of the year. The value of the change will all be determined by the willingness of the sellers to accept a possibly less aggressive bid from any potential buyers.