In the 20 years that he has worked at the Centrale – a weekly dedicated to the sale of used vehicles that has become an online platform – Jérôme Ponsin, its managing director, has never experienced such a sharp rise in the prices of used vehicles. .
From January 2020, which corresponds to the pre-Covid period, to December 2022, their price increased by 43.7% on average, according to data provided by sellers in the Central.
To build its indicator, the platform relies on the hundreds of thousands of offers published each quarter.
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This unprecedented increase is linked to the numerous crises that have followed one another for almost three years and which have had the effect of drying up the automobile market.
Indeed, the production and delivery of new vehicles usually maintains the fluidity of the second-hand car market.
Owners of new vehicles - rental companies, companies or individuals - then resell them.
But in recent years, the mechanics have seized up.
Closures of industrial sites during the great containment, shortages of components, logistical chaos, inflation…: the planet's factories have lost their production capacity.
In total, since the Covid crisis, the automobile market in France has shrunk by more than a third (2,214,279 private vehicles in 2019 and 1,529,035 in 2022).
A motorist who seeks to change car every four or five years will find that with the same budget he will no longer be able to buy the same type of vehicle.
According to the Centrale's analysis, he will have to pay between 5,000 and 8,000 euros more than in 2020 for a vehicle less than 8 years old, or 3,000 euros more if the latter is over 8 years old. years.
Median price of 22,000 euros
According to the Centrale, the median price of a used vehicle has now reached 22,000 euros.
At less than two years, it is around 30,000 euros;
it reaches 10,000 euros between 8 and 15 years old and 6,500 for those over 15 years old.
"We have the feeling that this crisis will last and that consumers must understand what is happening,"
said Jérôme Ponsin.
The objective of the barometer is to simplify the buying experience while the prices of vehicles, whose technologies are difficult to compare, are increasingly opaque”
.
The spectacular rise in second-hand prices has even affected the nearly century-old rating of the Argus.
A week ago the Argus indeed decided to rectify its depreciation curves to ensure that they stick better to the market.
"We noticed a gap which was becoming much too great between the selling prices of used cars and our ratings which are necessarily lower"
, underlined Olivier Flavier vice-president Mobility France of the Adevinta group, parent company of L'Argus. and owner of Le Bon Coin.
The Argus serves as a reference for the recovery of cars by a professional, indicating a depreciation curve for each type of vehicle from its new selling price.
