August 2025 – Dealer Auction’s latest Retail Margin Monitor has revealed that two Mercedes-Benz models offered dealers the highest profit potential in the sub-£10,000 retail bracket in July. The C-Class and A-Class took the top two spots with average retail margins of £2,500 and £2,450, respectively.
While the A-Class was a fresh entry, July’s top 10 was otherwise composed of previous top performers from the year – including the BMW 3 Series (£2,425), Peugeot 3008 (£2,350) and BMW 1 Series (£2,330) in third to fifth places. May and June’s respective top profit makers, the Hyundai Tucson and Ford Kuga, also remained in the chart.
Dealer Auction’s Marketplace Director, Kieran TeeBoon, commented: “When we changed the way we published our data at the start of 2025 – splitting the data set into two brackets: vehicles with a retail value of £0–£9,999 and over £10,000 – the expectation might have been more twists and turns, month to month. While July’s top 10 may come as a surprise to some, it’s precisely what makes these models’ performance more compelling. In a more diverse dataset, repeated success is evidence of genuine, sustained consumer demand, something dealers can rely on when sourcing stock.”
Turning to the top 10 for models retailing above £10,000, the top three positions were unchanged from June (Volvo XC90: £4,900, Discovery Sport: £4,275 and Range Rover Evoque: £3,960). However, notably, the Mercedes-Benz A-Class also entered this table for the first time, securing seventh place with an average retail margin of £2,910 – reflecting strong demand across different buyer segments.
At brand level, there was a major change in the chart for makes for models with a retail value of under £10,000 in July, as Land Rover ended BMW’s run of top spot performances. The former seized the top spot with an average margin of £3,050, the highest margin achieved in the table this year. The brand was followed by Mercedes-Benz (£2,500), pushing BMW into third (£2,400).
TeeBoon concluded: “July saw premium makes and models delivering solid returns across both retail segments, which reflects strong consumer sentiment. This is supported by Autotrader’s latest used car prices update, which stated that nine out of 10 people are at least as confident, if not more so, in their ability to afford their next car.1 As we move further into the second half of 2025, it’s brilliant to see this demand.”
Source:
1Autotrader, Used car prices update, 4 July 2025
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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:
The 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.
