Black Book: Cars Outperform Trucks, Luxury Cars Continue to Falter
Luxury vehicles continued to struggle last week, leading all segments in terms of depreciation. The other big story was the performance of cars, which continued to retain their values better than trucks.

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — Luxury vehicles continued to struggle last week, as the category registered the biggest depreciation change among both light car and truck segments, according to Black Book’s March 14 Marketing Insights report.
Luxury cars, near luxury cars and prestige luxury cars led the way in terms of depreciation, with their wholesale values falling 0.39%, 0.57%, and 0.94%, respectively. And according to the firm, the two-year retention rate for luxury cars has declined steadily over the past two years, with the rate of 2015 model-year vehicles sitting at 51%. That’s three percentage points lower than the retention rate of 2014 model-year luxury cars in March 2016.
“Luxury brand cars have shown higher drops in value on a percentage basis in the recent weeks in comparison to mainstream brand cars,” said Anil Goyal, senior vice president of Automotive Valuation and Analytics.
Full-size luxury crossovers claimed the highest depreciation change among all trucks (0.80%). Compact luxury crossovers also recorded one of the highest depreciation rates (0.42%) among all trucks. One exception to the luxury segment’s troubled week was the subcompact luxury crossover, which recorded the lowest weekly depreciation rate of 0.06%.
Also notable was the performance of car segments, which continued to outperform trucks in terms of value retention. The only exception was the compact van, which registered slight depreciation of 0.01%.
Volume-weighted, overall car segment values decreased by 0.31%, which was lower than the segment’s depreciation rate of 0.43% during the previous four week. As for trucks, the segment registered depreciation of 0.43%, which was higher than the 0.36% depreciation rate recorded for the segment during the previous four weeks.
According to Black Book’s data, much of the truck segment’s higher depreciation rate was driven by small pickups and crossovers, which saw their values decline by 0.80% and 0.63%, respectively.
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