CARY, N.C. -

Certified pre-owned vehicle sales in 2021 have come out of the gate surging ahead of the record pace set two year ago.

In 2019, which was the strongest year ever for the certified pre-owned vehicle market, there were 910,578 CPO sales in the first four months of the year.

The first four months of 2021 beat that sum by more than 45,000 units.

According to a Cox Automotive analysis of Motor Intelligence data, there have been 956,070 certified sales year-to-date.

That beats the year-ago pace by 29% and is 5% stronger than the tally through four months of 2019.

And last month’s certified sales were more than double the sum from April 2020.

Specifically, there were 259,242 CPO sales in April, up from 127,068 a year ago, according to Cox’s analysis.  Last month was also 25,702 units stronger than April 2019.

However, April was softer than the record-breaking 286,061 CPO sales in March, Cox Automotive said.

Toyota, Honda, Chevrolet, Ford and Nissan combined for a 44% CPO market share in April, Cox noted. The first three of those brands represented over a third of the market last month and are the segment’s largest, the company said.

Elsewhere, Mazda had its strongest April ever with 6,880 CPO sales, according to the automaker. That beat year-ago figures by 187%.

Volvo reported that it had 3,511 certified sales in April and has moved 13,021 CPO units year-to-date.

Overall used-car sales

Looking at the overall used-vehicle market, Cox estimated there was a 69% spike in sales last month compared to April 2020. It pegged the overall used-car SAAR at approximately 41.0 million last month, versus 40.5 million in March and 23.6 million in April 2020.

As far as used-car sales specifically involving a dealer, Cox said the retail used SAAR last month was an estimated 22.4 million. In March, it was 22.2 million. A year ago, it was 12.5 million.

In late April, TrueCar was forecasting 3.4 million used sales for the month. That sum would be 6% softer than March, but mark a 58% increase from April 2020.