the secondary car market grew by only 0.9% in March

Sales of used cars in March rose a modest 0.9% year-on-year, but continued their recovery on a monthly basis. According to Autostat, a total of 502.1 thousand used cars were sold, the most popular of which were Lada, Toyota, Hyundai and Kia – brands with a large fleet in the Russian Federation. Analysts expect demand in April to remain approximately at the level of March.

The used car market in March grew by 0.9%, 502.1 thousand units, Autostat calculated. This is 25.7% higher than in February. According to the results of January-March, 1.2 million used passenger cars were sold in the Russian Federation. This is 2.2% lower than a year earlier.

The dynamics of the secondary car market are much more modest than in the new car market.

Thus, in March, sales of new cars immediately increased by 2.1 times. However, the volume of the primary market is much smaller – 146.5 thousand cars, and the sales dynamics are also affected by the low base effect: sales began to recover to pre-crisis levels only in the summer of 2023, while the used car market was relatively stable.

In addition, the excitement in the primary market partially slowed down sales of used cars. So, as Kommersant wrote, buyers, amid fears of rising prices for cars and the availability of discounts from manufacturers and importers, actively chose new offers – in the last week of March, demand reached the level of February 2022. This led both to an increase in the supply of used cars – due to transactions through trade-in, and reduced average prices in the used car segment.

Sergey Udalov from Avtostat notes that sales in April are traditionally higher than in March, but this year, demand in both segments is likely to be at March levels.

The analyst points out that some cooling in demand is already visible in weekly sales on the new car market and lending on the secondary market after “emotional purchases” in March.

Lada remained the leader in the used car market in March: sales of used cars from the brand increased by 13.4%, to 123.1 thousand units. In second place is Toyota, whose sales, on the contrary, decreased by 11.3%, to 51.9 thousand units. This is followed by the Korean brands Kia (growth by 4.7%, to 29.4 thousand units) and Hyundai (growth by 1.5%, to 28 thousand). Nissan closes the top 5: the dynamics of sales of used cars of the brand is negative (a drop of 9.1%, to 23.7 thousand).

The leaders in the model rating are Lada 2107 and Lada 2114 Samara. The best seller among foreign cars was Kia Rio, followed by Hyundai Solaris and Ford Focus. All of these foreign cars were popular in the primary market, but Focus, unlike the Korean Rio and Solaris, made it into the top sales on the new car market only until 2014.

Olga Nikitina