ADESA Canada Price Index

The ADESA Canada Used Vehicle Price Index

ADESA Canada is the largest provider of wholesale used vehicle auctions in Canada. The Index is calculated from millions of pieces of sales data from ADESA Canada's live open bidding auctions with the addition of used vehicle auction sales data purchased through the National Auto Auction Association [NAAA].

December 2011

The ADESA Canada Used Vehicle Price Index has been updated through December. The index strengthened by approximately .36ppts from November, seasonally adjusted. Wholesale prices increased on average by about 5.5% M-o-M.

In the final month of 2011, the Canadian economy was not in the holiday spirit as consumer confidence plummeted 6.5 points down to 69.9 (now at its lowest level in more than two and a half years), the unemployment rate increased another 0.1 percentage point to 7.5% and national gasoline prices increased by approximately $0.02 per litre.  In parallel, the Canadian dollar tumbled as low as $0.964 against the U.S. greenback during the month of December.

Despite these economic woes, new-vehicle sales for December increased 2.6% from sales a year ago to 114,557.  Overall vehicle sales for 2011 were up 1.8% from 2010 to 1,585,519 units sold, slightly less than the 1.59 -1.6 million units forecasted at the beginning of the year.

Truck sales continued to dominate vehicle sales growth in December with a 4.2% increase from December 2010 with 68,572 units sold.  The light truck share of the overall market remained robust at 59.9% of total sales, an increase over last December’s share (58.9%).  Truck sales for the year were 891,784 representing a 4.7% increase over 2010 and the overall share of the vehicle sales market for light trucks increased to 56.2% in 2011 from 54.7% in 2010.

In December, all the segments saw positive changes. The Minivan, Midsize SUV and Midsize segments saw the greatest changes with increases of 8% ($417), 6% ($804) and 6% ($441) respectively. Compact SUV, Fullsize pickup and Mid Compact also saw increases at more moderate rates of 5% ($422), 4% ($540) and 3% ($179) respectively.