Average wholesale used vehicle prices in Canada experienced another up-tick with trucks and SUVs leading the way, according to Canadian Black Book’s market update.
The update was released during the first week of March, and noted that the increase was significantly better than seasonal norms (2017-2019) for the overall market — although it did reveal a mixed performance for the car and truck/SUV segments.
“Cars were nearly on par to historical performance (2017-2019), while truck and SUV segments continued to lead the strengthening in prices, with values not only exceeding historical performance (2017-2019), but reversing the typical weekly decline and showing a strong up-swing in prices,” said CBB in its update.
On the car segment front, used cars posted a weekly change of -0.13% from the previous week (of when the report was released, on March 2) — essentially a step back from the preceding week’s increase of 0.04%. Two car segments revealed gains: sub-compact cars with +0.44%, and compact cars with +0.08%.
Leading the weekly declines was the full-size car category with -0.47%, followed by luxury cars at -0.40%. Prestige luxury cars were down 0.14%, near luxury cars decreased by 0.13%, and premium sporty cars and sports cars were down both 0.10%. Mid-size cars decreased 0.07%.
Trucks and SUVs fared better, with the truck segment experiencing an average increase in values for the week of 0.17% — up from the prior week’s increase of 0.07%. Sub-compact crossovers managed the largest increase for the week with 0.68%, followed by mid-size crossover/SUVs up 0.50% and small pickups increasing 0.40%.
Only the full-size luxury crossover/SUV segment revealed measurable declines, with a weekly change of -0.09%. Full-size pickups and compact luxury crossover/SUVs remained relatively flat for the week, at 0.01%.
On the Canadian Black Book Used Vehicle Retention Index, the company said February 2021 set another new all-time record. The Index tracks the retained value performance of 2- to 6-year-old vehicles. In February it increased to 114.0, up 1.5 points (1.3%) from January and up 5.3% from February 2020.
“In absolute dollars, used vehicle prices in the market have been strengthening the past couple of weeks; and when measured relative to the new-price (equipped MSRP), and adjusted for seasonality, this Index clearly shows that Canadian used vehicle prices are at an all-time high,” said CBB.
Read the full report here.
