Hello and welcome to this week’s Used Car Market Report, with insights from Ricky Beggs and Black Book. This will be a short week in the market due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Hopefully in addition to the Black Friday crowds and sales at the big box retailers and electronics stores the excitement will spread over to the new and used auto lots.

Even though there were comments from the Black Book survey personnel this past week indicating softness in the market, prices were also described as all over the board, and even steady. It was interesting that for the first time in several weeks there were no comments about the late model, former rental cars being high in no sales.

The two segments with the largest declining adjustments over the past seven weeks, the Prestige Luxury Cars and the Premium Sporty Cars, coming from the highline markets, are reflective of a market report from Tennessee that indicated the highline models were struggling.

Let’s take a look at the results of the editors’ daily market analysis. With over 1875 vehicles adjusted each day throughout the week, the average segment change for the cars at -$84 was the largest decline over the past eight weeks. Within the trucks the -$42 average segment change this past week was the lowest level of change over the past five weeks. The trucks have been better performers with the lower depreciation than the cars over the past few months. Over the past two weeks of all the adjustments being made, we have had 28% and 30% of all adjustments being increases. This is a little stronger than normal for this time of the year. Breaking down the data even further, only 11% and 8% of the positive adjustments over the past two weeks were from the car mix type.

The Full-size Van segments got back on the increasing side this past week. The Full-size Pickups at -$12, had the smallest declines for that segment over the past six weeks. The declines of -$55 for the Full-size SUVs, -$87 for the Full-size Crossovers, and also -$55 for the Luxury SUVs, though well over the overall truck average of -$42, are the lowest declines for each of those large utility segments over the past seven, five, and six of the previous seven weeks respectively.

The pickups and full-size vans are probably being driven by an improving economy along with the construction/service industry. The full-size utilities could be driven by the favorable gas prices which fell another $.05 at the pump this past week to $2.89 a gallon, $.33 below one year ago.

As we look at the prices and movement in the market we see opportunities for both buyers and sellers. We hope to see you on the auction lanes during this short week or at least when the holiday is completed.
Happy Thanksgiving!