McLEAN, Va. -

While examining used-car pricing trends in its latest Guidelines report , NADA Used Car Guide spotted something in two of the larger segments that was a bit different from prior months.

With fuel costs down, large pickups and SUVs were a bit stronger than they were in May.

“In a departure from the previous three months, large pickup and SUV performance actually improved slightly month-over-month as waning fuel prices helped to rekindle demand,” officials indicated. “Even the price of oil has risen subtly over the past week, the historical relationship between oil prices and gas prices suggest that we won’t see any significant changes one way or the other in fuel prices near-term.”

As far as overall AuctionNet wholesale values, things were fairly static month-over-month.  Breaking its AuctionNet price data down by its five vehicle classes, car values were down a little less than 0.8 percent compared to May, while crossovers were off less than 0.4 percent and vans were down 0.6 percent.

Pickups were up quite modestly (less than 0.2 percent) from the prior month, while SUVs were up 0.6 percent.

Year-over-year, all five classes showed gains, with cars (up more than 18 percent) leading the way. Prices for vans were up more than 8 percent, with the CUV gain slightly less than 8 percent. Pickup and SUV prices were each up more than 2 percent.

Offering some more commentary on the sequential changes, analysts noted: “As we stated in June’s edition of Guidelines, we anticipated that used-car prices would reach a peak around the middle of that month and that they would continue to soften into July as fuel prices abated and as the new-vehicle inventory picture continued to improve.

"At the end of the month there was little evidence to suggest otherwise, and as a result, car value adjustments in the July edition of the Official Used Car Guide reflect a mild-to-moderate continuation of this downward trend," they added.

Looking at trucks, analysts pointed out that they "rallied" somewhat last month, but typically these values slow down during the early part of the summer.

"Generally speaking, we believe that prices will stabilize throughout July, due primarily to new-vehicle incentive pressure, and July guidebook value adjustments were approached with this in mind," they noted.