ATLANTA -

The recent trend of luxury vehicles being scarce across the country remained “quite strong,” according to the latest installment of vehicle scarcity data that is provided monthly to Auto Remarketing by AutoTrader.com.

In fact, this past month, luxury models took up the majority of the top 10 most-scarce vehicle list in several designated market areas, including Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta and San Francisco.

Rick Wainschel, vice president of automotive insights at AutoTrader.com, says consumers are showing more interest in these rides, a trend that could be directly connected to recent economic growth.

“Interest in luxury vehicles has been increasing for several months, and the prevalence of these higher-end vehicles on the scarcity report is an indicator that demand is starting to outpace supply in the pre-owned market,” said Wainschel.

“With the economy steadily improving, consumer confidence has been on the rise, and we believe that shoppers may be shifting from a ‘need to buy’ approach where they predominantly consider practical vehicles to more of a ‘want to buy’ mindset,” he continued.

AutoTrader expects this trend to continue for luxury segments.

CPO Audi and Porsche models “dominated” the scarcity lists in all of those DMAs. And CPO luxury models are proving particularly hard to find on a national level, as well.

Luxury rides made up seven of the 10 spots on the national CPO scarcity list.

Specifically, the CPO BMW M Series overtook the Porsche Cayman for the No. 1 spot.

And the CPO Porsche Boxster, which made the top 10 list for national CPO scarcity for the first time in January, again made the list in February.

On a DMA level, in the nation’s capitol, CPO Audi models made up five of the 10 spots on the list, with the S4 at No. 1, the A3 at No. 3, the TT at No. 4, the A6 at No. 7 and the A5 at No. 9, AutoTrader.com reported.

The most scarce CPO Porsche models in the DMAs were the Cayman, Cayenne and Boxter:

—CPO Porsche Cayman was scarce in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Dallas/Ft. Worth and Houston.

—CPO Porsche Cayenne was scarce in San Francisco, Houston, New York and Los Angeles.

—CPO Porsche Boxter was scarce in San Francisco, New York, Atlanta and Boston.

On the other hand, the most scarce CPO Audi models in the DMAs were the S4, A5 and TT:

—CPO Audi S4 was scarce in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston, Chicago and Boston.

—CPO Audi A5 was scarce in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston and Boston.

—CPO Audi TT was scarce in Los Angeles, New York, and Atlanta.

AutoTrader also provided the following charts to illustrate its data:


 

Sarah Rubenoff can be reached at srubenoff@autoremarketing.com. Continue the conversation with Auto Remarketing on both LinkedIn and Twitter.