Pandemic after-effect blows hole in sales of two- to five-year-old cars in France
Judging by volume only, the French used car market is doing quite well, with February trade up 3.9% year on year, on a per-workday basis. But look at the age of the vehicles traded, and something curious is happening: nearly new car sales are collapsing – an after-effect of the pandemic.
The French used car market is on a high, with just over 439,000 transactions in February, says AAA Data. While that is down 0.8% year-on-year in absolute volume, the figure is actually up 3.9% when factoring in the smaller number of workdays this February, to just under 22,000 transactions per day.
Rude health
This confirms the rude health the sector is in, with 897,000 used vehicles changing owners in France in the first two months of this year alone. That’s up 3.4% in absolute volume, and up 5.7% on a transactions-per-day basis (up to around 21,350).
In February, sales for the four largest brands on the used car market declined more than the average, with Renault losing 1.5% (down to 82,000 vehicles), Peugeot declining 3.7% (to 75,700 units), Citroën falling 5.2% (to 47,000) and VW down by 2.6% (to 33,500).
Despite the overall 0.8% decline in sales, four brands scored notable used market share gains: BMW (up 1.7% to 19,200 units), Toyota (+12.9% to 18,350), Dacia (+8.4% to 15,380), and Hyundai (+13.6% to 6,500).
Per day
The picture is slightly different when we look at transactions per day in February. Here, Citroën and Nissan outperform the market (+4.6%), but doing particularly well are Hyundai (+19.2%), Toyota (+18.3%), Volvo (+15.5%), Dacia (+13.7%), and Skoda (+13%). DS used car sales, on the other hand, crashed by 40.6%.
Largest players are still Renault (4,103 used vehicles traded per day), Peugeot (3,776 units), Citroën (2,350) and VW (1,676).
Still according to AAA Data, the trade in France in two- to five-year-old cars dropped dramatically since the beginning of this year, whatever the sales channel.
Sharper decrease
In February, 86,513 vehicles aged two to five years were traded in France, which is just under 20% of the total. It’s also 12.9% fewer than in the same month last year. That is a much sharper decrease than other age segments on the decline. The sale of 11- to 15-year-old cars dropped by 4.5%, while one-year-olds declined by 3.7%.
The sharp decline of two- to five-year-old cars is an acceleration of the trend in January; for the first two months of the year together, the volume of two- to five-year-olds traded dropped by 9.7% year on year, to 172,466. The only other segment declining over that same period were one-year-olds, and by much less (-1.6%).
It’s a phenomenon, by the way, that is happening both in the B2C and C2C channels, although much more pronounced in C2C (down 18.2% compared to the first two months of 2024, to 73,400 units) than in B2C (down 2.2% to 99,000).
Weakening supply
The reason goes back to weakening supply – and that is a distant consequence of the pandemic, with new car registrations falling by 25.5% in 2020, by 15.1% in 2021, and by 7.8% in 2022. Only in 2023 did new car sales increase again, by 16.1%.
Converse to, and probably in compensation of, the sales decline in two- to five-year-olds, the six- to ten-year-old segment gained 11.2% in volume in the first two months of the year, growing to 202,200 units. In February alone, just shy of 100,000 vehicles in this age bracket changed owners, an increase of 6.7% year on year.
Another growing segment are used cars up to a year old, which saw a 10.1% volume increase in February to 25,900 units. (Over the first two months, the volume was 51,700 units, up 12.5%). The rising popularity of this segment is no doubt related to the rising cost of new cars.
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