Vanity Fair reported last week that James Earl Jones was retiring as being the voice of Darth Vader in future “Star Wars” projects.

Too bad.

Jones’ narration of the opening segment of Black Book’s Market Insights might have been appropriate to articulate how wholesale values softened another 0.89% and the estimated average weekly sales rate dropped to 56% last week.

Imagine Darth Vader reading Black Book’s synopsis: “Larger than normal market declines have continued for nine consecutive weeks. Sales rates are some of the lowest we have seen in a long time and available inventory in many of the lanes is down, particularly for those sellers that heavily rely on direct purchase from consumers.”

Perhaps the “force” is pushing wholesale prices lower, as Black Book determined all nine car segments and 12 of the 13 truck segments decreased in value last week.

Beginning on the car side, Black Book reported that overall car values declined by 0.87% on a volume-weighted basis.

Analysts noticed that full-size cars led the car price drops, sliding by 1.54%. That specific car segment now has softened for 14 weeks in a row with an average value drop of 0.69%.

Also of note, Black Book mentioned compact car values dropped by another 0.78%, but it was the smallest dip in four weeks.

Meanwhile, overall truck segment values on a volume-weighted basis decreased 0.90%, according to Black Book.

Analysts said the full-size crossover/SUV segment continued the trend of large weekly declines by decreasing another 1.85%. During the past eight weeks, Black Book determined the segment has averaged a weekly decline of 1.33%.

Black Book wrapped up its latest installment of Market Insights with perhaps a few hints on when the empire — meaning wholesale market — could strike back.

“Even though sales rates continued to decrease, the buyer count was stable. Buyers were in the lanes but were not willing to pay higher prices in hopes that prices are still coming down,” analysts said.

“Rental companies seemed to make more of an appearance last week and were very competitive with the large independent dealers. Smaller franchise dealers were not as active but got in when they could to drive the competition,” they continued.

“With fall coming up, we can anticipate sellers holding onto their floors in hopes that they will see an increase in the market. There were some model year 2023 vehicles that ran in the lanes which could possibly mean that more will be coming soon as manufacturers are continuing to move forward with production,” Black Book added.

“Inventory was on the lower end last week, which could possibly be why there were not as many If sales as we have seen in the past and why sellers are not wanting to negotiate. Overall, wholesale values still had significant decreases,” analysts went on to say.