A Leveling Market, but More Increases

GAINESVILLE, GA - Week over week, gasoline prices at the pump increased by $0.03, with no detriment to the necessary changes to the vehicles of the truck segments, according to Black Book. With many of the survey reports mentioning a market that is leveling off, it wasn’t so within the cars as the average segment change was jest less of a declining level at $87 as compared to the previous week’s -$94. These are the two largest declining segments amounts in more than a year.

According to Black Book, The Premium Sporty Cars (PSC) at -$239 and the Prestige Luxury Cars (PLC) at -$114 continue to be the largest declining segments. The car segment making the biggest turnaround week over week other than the leading declining segments was with the Luxury Level Cars (LLC) which declining by $88 as compared to the -$135 the previous week.

"A year ago, the cars were much more stable at an average segment change of -$49, with only one segment declining by more than $70 and that being the Premium Sporty Cars at -$104. This past week 7 car segments had larger than $80 declines," said Ricky Beggs, VP and managing editor for Black Book. "As we often prefer to see consistency, while looking at which segment or segments have trended most like the overall average, the Entry Sporty Cars (ESC), at -$95 this week has trended most like the overall car segment average change over the past three months. The trend mirrors the overall change pattern while generally being just over the segment average with the greatest variance being the week ending August 30. When looking at the truck trends, other than the week ending July 20, the Compact Crossovers (CXU) most represents the average truck trend."

Looking at the trucks, the stability continues with three segments increasing for the week and another five segments that depreciated by less than 0.2 percent. The Mid-size Pickups (MPT) at +$24 and the Full-size Pickups (FPT) at +$16 were just ahead of the +$3 for the Compact Crossovers (CXU).

"A year ago, there were no segments with positive adjustments although there were three that declined $6 or less for the week," Beggs noted.

The three increasing truck segments were force regarding the 42 percent of all adjustments that were increases during the past week.

"Our outlook for the next couple of weeks is an active market with a similar number of changes compared to this past week," Beggs said. "The trending should again see larger declines with the more luxury oriented models. We are also watching the late model vehicles as the lack of interest in the lanes for these could represent some relatively large negative adjustments."

Although gasoline prices rose as reported on September 17, by the end of last week the decline in pump prices had begun, according to Black Book.

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