AUTO1 Group Price Index
The European Used Car Price Report
Introduction
The AUTO1 Group Price Index shows the monthly evolution of used car prices across Europe. By analyzing AUTO1 Group’s database of around 4.2 million used car transactions Europe-wide, AUTO1 Group has developed a pioneering index to improve data transparency in the used car market and give insights into wholesale prices. The starting point of the AUTO1 Group Price Index is January 2015 with a reference value of 100. The AUTO1 Group Price Index is published on a monthly basis.
The Latest Index
The AUTO1 Group Price Index shows a continuous decrease for used car prices in 2024, dropping from 141.2 in February to 137.3 in March 2024 (-2.8%). After stable wholesale used car prices in 2023, with a slight decrease by 1.6% from January to December 2023, the first quarter of 2024 shows a more dynamic price environment. Year to date, used car prices have declined by -3.3%.
Year over year, used car wholesale prices decreased by 9%, with the index moving from 150.9 in March 2023 to 137.3 in March this year. Used car prices are still 18.3% higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic compared to March 2019 (116.1).
“As the European market leader we offer the largest selection of used cars in all price categories in more than 30 European countries. By leveraging our transaction data since the company's foundation, we have developed a pioneering index that measures pricing trends in the wholesale used car market.”
Moritz Lück
SVP Sales & Operations
Methodology
Index basing:
The starting point of the AUTO1 Group Price Index is January 2015 with a reference value of 100. From the index start, AUTO1 Group considers their European data consistent enough to provide representative insights into price developments.
Processed data:
The index includes all AUTO1 Group wholesale transactions since January 2015. The vehicles of the data set are representative of the European used car market.
Data Cleaning
Prices, ages and mileages outside the [0.5; 99.5] percentile range are considered as outliers and are not considered for the index.
Index Calculation
AUTO1 Group calculates the mean sales prices for each month. To provide a statistically robust analysis on the data set, those mean prices are calculated monthly based on various categories (for example vehicle classes, fuel types, mileage ranges) whose distributions are used as weights. The index is calculated based on current and aggregated past weights.
Seasonal Adjustment
A 12 months based additive decomposed model is used to extract and remove the seasonality component from the index.