GAINESVILLE, Ga. -
Despite both overall car and truck segments showing softer wholesale prices yet again, Black Book managing editor Ricky Beggs noticed some models gaining value last week and said several segments accounted for a large chunk of this upward trend, including  full-size passenger wagons, full-size cargo vans and full-size pickups.
Specifically, the proportion of adjustments made by Black Book last week that were positive was at 15 percent, he said in the latest “Beggs On The Used Car Market” video report.
The average upswing for the vehicles whose values climbed was close to $140.
Looking at the aforementioned segments that comprised a lot of the increases, Beggs noted that there was a $16 uptick in the values of full-size passenger wagons and a $5 increase in full-size pickups. Meanwhile, full-size cargo vans were up $2.
“Random other vehicles increased throughout the week but not enough to make the total segment change to a positive change,” Beggs shared.
He also noticed that several of the segments’ declines were not as heavy as the prior week’s decline. In fact, the value declines in four of the 10 car segments tracked by Black Book were less severe. Eight of the 14 truck segments saw their value declines become less steep.
Truck segments, as a whole, saw their value erosion slow on a week-over-week basis from $63 to $43. However, there was a $75 decline for cars, as compared to $68.
This marked the 23rd consecutive week of softening for the overall car segment and the 21st straight week of slowdown for the truck segment, Beggs pointed out.
That said, there were some positive things of note.
“A few of the vehicles with increases in value for past week included selected models and model years of the Dodge Dakota, Nissan Rogue, Hyundai Azera, Ford Sport Trac, Mitsubishi Outlander, Mazda CX-9, Chevrolet and GMC G Vans and the Toyota Highlander,” Beggs stated. “These are not the only ones with increases but it is a good sample.”
Looking at the past month, the heaviest decliners among cars was the premium sporty car segment, as its values dropped $605. Prestige luxury cars were next on the list with a $580 decrease.
Showing the smallest drop-offs were compact cars (down $80), followed by entry-level cars (down $83).
Moving over to trucks, full-size CUVs experienced the heaviest value erosion ($443). Luxury SUVs were next at $352.
The truck segment with the lightest dip was the passenger van category, which showed an $87 decline. Second was the cargo van segment (down $109).
Discussing the overall wholesale market, Beggs said that there many indications of a fall market based on dealer comments.
“’Higher no sales;’ ‘some reluctant to buy;’ ‘short on cars;’ ‘sellers are adjusting floors;’ ‘cheaper doing better;’ ‘Extra clean and clean selling well’ were just a few of the comments from the dealers that were reported to Black Book survey personnel during the past week,” Beggs shared.
“All of these comments reflect upon the existing fall seasonal market,” he continued.
Looking forward, Beggs later added: “As we get closer to the last two months of the year, the dealers are still needing and looking for additional cars and trucks in an extremely limited market, thus the values are holding better than in most years.”

To view Beggs’ video report, visit here.

Black Book Unveils New iPhone Capability
In other news from the company, Black Book has launched a new release of its iUsedCar application, this time including VIN-scan capability in the iPhone App.
Basically, the iPhone camera has been integrated to serve as a VIN scanner, giving users of iUsedCar the ability to scan vehicle barcodes and pull up the value database.
“Utilizing the new technologies available to us, our teams have developed Vin-scan functionality with an extremely high degree of accuracy and reliability, virtually eliminating the excessive fail rates of past scanners and setting a new standard for performance,” Black Book president Tom Cross.
New and current users of the iUsedCar app can go to the Apple iTunes Store to obtain the new release. There are also retail and dealer-only editions of the product, officials noted.
The dealer-only edition offers wholesale market data via the Daily value updates from Black Book.