June 2024 – Data from Dealer Auction’s Retail Margin Monitor for May 2024 has revealed a brand-new entry. The Ford EcoSport secured the 10th spot with an average retail margin of £2,670. The performance of this compact SUV highlights the recent trend for mainstream models as solid profit generators, with the previous month seeing the Ford S-MAX in the chart and the Ford Kuga also performing well just outside the top 10.
Dealer Auction’s Marketplace Director, Kieran TeeBoon, commented: “It’s interesting to see mainstream, family-friendly models like the EcoSport stake a claim in the top 10. The Peugeot 3008 also rejoined the chart for the first time this year. But it’s not just mainstream models enjoying their time in the sun this summer – the Audi Q5 has appeared for the first time since February 2022. We encourage dealers to keep an eye on the data to see which models are proving popular with consumers and stock up accordingly!”
Dealer Auction’s most recent data comes hot on the heels of the SMMT’s announcement that the UK used car market grew 6.5% in the first quarter of 2024 – the best start to a year since 2019. 1
TeeBoon continued: “This bounce is definitely a confidence boost for the industry. Recent challenges have meant that price adjustments have become a key defence tactic for dealers, but our metrics show that it pays to be proactive as well as reactive – homing in on those unique opportunities for profit.”
Looking deeper into the SMMT’s report, the top 10 best-selling models in Q1 2024 were typically mainstream vehicles, although two BMW and MINI models also ranked.2 Interestingly, there were no similarities with Dealer Auction’s top-performing profit-turners in Q1. This, the platform says, reinforces their ethos of using data to see consumer appetite and expected margins.
At brand level, the top 10 remained broadly unchanged from May, with the top 5 being identical: Land Rover topped the chart with an average retail margin of £4,150, followed by Jaguar (£3,450), BMW (£2,900), Audi (£2,725) and Mercedes-Benz (£2,710). With the Audi Q5’s performance in the model charts, Audi is one to watch over the coming months.
Further down the table, Kia and Volkswagen re-entered the chart, in a shuffle that has become typical of the lower half of the brand top 10.
TeeBoon notes: “In the first five months of 2024, we’ve seen Kia, Nissan, Honda, Volkswagen, Toyota, Peugeot and Škoda jostle for position at the lower end of the table. While it shows that mainstream models are certainly not to be overlooked, it will be interesting to see if any can become stalwarts of the top 10 in the way that premium brands like Land Rover, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have.”
Richard Walker, Auto Trader’s Data & Insights Director, added: “As ever, the Retail Margin Monitor reflects what we’re seeing in our data, and as Kieran highlights, the used car market is in a very robust position at the moment. Retail prices are stabilising, demand is healthy, cars are selling quickly, and transactions are above where they were last year. With signs of economic green shoots and growing consumer confidence, our outlook for the year ahead remains very positive. The market is nuanced, however, so to find the big profit opportunities, it’s critical to utilise the data available to spot those vehicles offering your forecourt the biggest potential.”
Sources:
1,2 https://www.smmt.co.uk/2024/05/used-car-market-hits-five-year-high-as-evs-reach-record-share/
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About Dealer Auction
Dealer Auction is the UK’s leading digital remarketing platform. We give buyers and sellers more choice, better insight and greater margins. Dealer Auction is an independent company, created through a joint venture between Cox Automotive and Auto Trader. For more information, visit www.dealerauction.co.uk.
Launched in January 2022, Dealer Auction’s Retail Margin Monitor tracks the potential retail margin that can be achieved on vehicles bought via Dealer Auction’s open network. We track models meeting two key criteria: more than 20 units sold with a retail price of less than £25,000. We then compare the sold price for each model with the Auto Trader market average to reveal the potential margin. For the brand table, we compare models with more than 50 units sold. We crunch the numbers at the start of every new month.
Notes:
1The average ‘Auto Trader Retail Rating’ uses three key metrics to determine the consumer demand for the vehicle:
- Average days to sell – Calculated for the whole of the UK and then adjusted for the variations Auto Trader have observed locally in your area.
- Live market supply – Comparing the national supply level for the vehicle over the last seven days with the usual level of supply Auto Trader have seen in the market over the last six months.
- Live buyer demand – Analysing how many people are currently searching for the vehicle on Auto Trader, comparing consumer search behaviour over the last seven days against the level of interest over the last six months.
