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Revealed: The used car models that had dealers in a February frenzy

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Time 10:45 am, March 11, 2021

With further good news about the economy opening up in the weeks ahead, things have been looking up for the used car market in the UK over the past month.

This good news has also been reflected in sales at Motorway, with another bumper month in February leading to dealers snapping up more quality cars than ever at great prices.

Our uplift in sales has coincided with a relaunch of the Motorway service and a new brand proposition for private car owners to ‘sell your car like a pro’.


With stock acquisition becoming increasingly complicated and competitive, we are focusing on keeping things simple – cutting out the middleman to give dealers direct access to exclusive private stock, nationwide, every day.

And with an ever-increasing number of customers selling their car on Motorway, we are proving that we are the most direct and smartest way to buy stock, through a convenient 100 per cent online experience.

Stock levels

In January we saw a 50 per cent increase in stock levels from December.


And the numbers kept growing in February – rising by another 20 per cent and demonstrating that consumer appetite for buying and selling cars shows no signs of slowing down as we move into spring and can expect to come out of the national lockdown.

The majority of this stock was between the £5-20k tiers but the sub-£5k bracket was also flush with some great cars.

With so much stock available, there were some amazing deals to be had, resulting in all cars in these tiers going for under CAP, including prestige brands such as Porsche, Mercedes and Land Rover.

In fact, the only tiers that went for over CAP were £20-30k, £40-50k and £50-75k, and even then for no more than two per cent above it.

That being said, it was the higher-value cars in the £50-75k bracket that got the most bids, averaging 10 individual bids per car, and this competition is what sent these cars over CAP.

However, the highest number of bids went to two cars in lower tiers.

A Volvo XC90 in the £20-30k bracket had the higher number of bids but went for just four per cent over CAP, while a Mercedes SLK 200 in the £10-15k bracket went for an incredible 20 per cent over CAP.

Brand winners

As in previous months, when it comes to specific brands the highest stock levels still came from the usual suspects, namely, BMW, Ford, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Audi and Land Rover.

On average, they all went for under CAP in February, providing dealers with some great stock at even better price.


Only five brands went over CAP in February – Mini, Porsche, Jaguar, Jeep and Bentley – but only for between 0.1 and two per cent.

Most in-demand vehicle

But which individual car model got dealers in a frenzy in February?

In January, it was a Ford Transit Custom 290 that hit the mark. But in February, the most in-demand car was a Mini Cooper.

While Mini always proves popular, this particular car – in the £5-10k bracket – had very low mileage (15k for a 2017 reg), which resulted in it going for an impressive 65 per cent over CAP.

It was followed by a Mazda 3, similar to the one pictured, in the sub-£5k tier that went for 38 per cent over CAP – it had moderate mileage for a 10-year-old car (60k), no costly damage to the exterior and a clean service record.

In third place was a Ford Mondeo Titanium X – a popular model that also had a clean service record and low-ish mileage considering its age (2011, 70k).

Half of the top 10 in February was made up of sub-£5k cars and in fact, looking at our top 20 all of the cars bar a Jaguar sold for less than £15k.

This included prestige brands such as Porsche, Audi and Mercedes, proving that dealers out there are on the look-out for quality cars at all price ranges, not just the high end, to fill their forecourts.

Bottom of the league

The worst-performing car in February was a Seat Leon in the sub-£5k bracket.

This was a basic model with two scuffed alloys and had a significant preparation cost element that dragged the price down. As a result, it went for 60 per cent of CAP.

A Hyundai i20 in the sub-£5k bracket also failed to set the world alight. It had a lot of scuffs too, as well as a missing gear stick cover and a lot of independent dealer services, which affected the final sale price of 60 per cent of CAP.

Motorway looked at all the vehicles in the month of February 2021 to see which specific individual vehicles fared the best at auction, driving the final sale price up and over CAP.

The lists of the top 20 highest as well as lowest bids vs CAP on individual cars are below:

Highest bids vs CAP on individual vehicles in February 2021 from Motorway

Source: Motorway

 

Lowest bids vs CAP on individual vehicles in February 2021 from Motorway

Source: Motorway

Ready to buy stock on Motorway?

If you want to stay ahead of the competition and buy exclusive, privately-owned stock, sign up to Motorway here.

We’ll be back next month to look at how March has fared and which cars were ‘hot or not’.

Car Dealer Magazine's avatar

Car Dealer has been covering the motor trade since 2008 as both a print and digital publication. In 2020 the title went fully digital and now provides daily motoring updates on this website for the car industry. A digital magazine is published once a month.



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