Buying a used car, a good deal?
Maybe not.
If the second-hand market is doing wonderfully lately, some vehicle models, victims of their success, see their resale price on second-hand platforms approaching those of new.
And sometimes even exceed them.
Read also: The used car site CarNext raises 400 million euros to expand in Europe
This is the case of the Dacia Sandero, the most accessible model of the low-cost brand and the vehicle best sold to individuals in the first half of 2021. The car of the Romanian brand - owned by Renault -, in addition to its low consumption, has always seduced by its unbeatable price: 8,890 euros for the "
Access
"
version
. Thus the brand sold 33,951 Sandero units in the first half of 2021. But this volume, however considerable, turned out to be insufficient in view of the demand: many potential buyers then turned to the second-hand market. An option which is all the more attractive with the shortage of semiconductors which has raged since the beginning of the year, delivery times can be counted in months. "
We have to wait until 2022
“For certain options, confirms a Dacia dealer when asked about the availability of the Dacia Sandero.
500 or 1000 euros more expensive than the new one
Price offered for a 2020 Dacia Sandero, displaying 10,000 kilometers on the odometer.
A new vehicle costs 8,890 euros.
Autoscout24
As a result of this rush for opportunity, prices rise ... to the point of exceeding those of new. Thus, the Dacia Sandero Stepway, a
very popular
“Crossover”
type version
, can be sold on second-hand sites for 500 or 1000 euros more expensive than new. The same phenomenon can be observed on the Toyota Yaris, the fourth version of which is sold second-hand at prices close to a vehicle that has just left the factory. Toyota with this model "
low consumption and French manufacture
" has, as for the Sandero, "
a very good level of resale and therefore discount
", according to the Argus group.
If these second-hand price surges mainly concern entry-level vehicles, some premium cars are also affected, such as the new Land Rover Defender.
This all-terrain vehicle, "
heavily 'malussé' in diesel (30,000 €) is resold at the price of new if it has a low mileage to avoid paying the penalty"
details the Argus group in Figaro.
Read also: In France, the boom in used vehicles
Overall, on all of these low-mileage used vehicles, used purchase prices have indeed increased by 12.9% between June 2019 and June 2020 according to data from Autoscout24.
Second-hand market undergoing major change
This development is not isolated, however, and is part of a booming second-hand market: “over
the period from July 2020 to June 2021, the number of used car registrations stands at 6 , 3 million euros, that is to say + 20% compared to the same period a year earlier
”affirms Olivier Flavier, CEO of Argus. For the used car specialist, this explosion is explained by two phenomena which affect professionals and indirectly affect individuals: "
the lack of rental car returns
" and the shortage of new vehicles
, "because of out of stocks of electronic components
”. "
However, the situation should normalize by the end of 2021 according to the manufacturers,
”we reassure Argus.
