CARY, N.C. -

A sluggish start has not dimmed Cox Automotive’s outlook for certified pre-owned vehicle sales this year.

According to the company’s analysis of Motor Intelligence data, January’s 201,023 CPO sales marked a 7% year-over-year decline and a 13% month-over-month drop.

But take last month's softening with a grain of salt. The year-ago figure marked a decade-high for January certified sales, and December’s tally was “seasonally strong,” Cox said in the Data Point report from Feb. 12.

What’s more, Cox is projecting there will be 2.8 million CPO sales this year. While that’s subject to change, it would handily beat year-ago figures of 2.6 million and put the industry back to where it was in 2019 — which happened to be the ninth consecutive year of record sales, a streak that ended last year.

“The CPO market has been one of the strongest performing segments within the auto retail market despite the ongoing pandemic,” Cox said in the analysis. “Going into 2021, we expect the market to continue its consistent performance for year-over-year gains.”

Nearly a third of all certified sales in January (32%) were either Toyota, Honda or Chevrolet models, the company said.

Add Ford and Nissan to the mix and you’ve got about half the market (45%).

Looking elsewhere around the industry, Mazda North American Operations reported a 12.4% year-over-year gain in CPO sales, with 5,247 vehicles moved last month. In its news release, MNAO said it, “oversees the sales, marketing, parts and customer service support of Mazda vehicles in the United States and Mexico through approximately 620 dealers,”

Canada CPO sales trends

Moving to Canada, there appeared to be a bit of auto retail challenge around shutdowns in Ontario and Quebec as 2021 gets underway, and that is impacting certified pre-owned sales. Here's a roundup of January CPO sales results shared by automakers, thus far.

At Hyundai, its certified sales fell 25% year-over-year, coming in at 642 for January. Of course, last year marked the strongest ever CPO January for the brand, and despite the decline, “we are still very satisfied with the results considering the headwinds facing the market in January,” said Charles Plewes, who heads up remarketing and CPO for Hyundai Auto Canada Corp., in an email.

“Most of our dealers in Quebec and Ontario were closed to walk-in traffic, which made sales very challenging,” Plewes said.

Nissan and Infiniti also faced similar headwinds in Canada during January.

Nissan had 599 CPO sales, down from 1,023 a year ago.  Infiniti CPO sales fell from 151 in January 2020 to 80 last month.

“January was a real tough month,” said Joel Gregory, who heads up CPO for Nissan and Infiniti in Canada, via email.

“Provincial ‘lockdowns’ in the two highest volume provinces (Ontario and Quebec) hampered business making any type of foot traffic into dealerships very challenging,” Gregory said.

Volvo continued to show gains, it said, with 229 CPO sales in Canada, a 6% increase.