MT. ARLINGTON, NJ – The IARA Vehicle Values Roundtable, co-moderated by Raj Sundaram, president of Automotive Lease Guide and Charlie Vogelheim of J.D. Power and Associates, focused on the whether various guidebooks can accurately and completely depict the value of each vehicle type.

“It was agreed that, for the most part, guidebooks accurately reflect most vehicle values,” said Matt Marks, IARA executive director.

However, there are some vehicles with so many model variations, such as the Ford F-150 pickup, that an accurate price on each model variation is not possible. It was stated in the discussion that the selling price could be several thousand dollars off compared to the listed book value. The current vehicle 17-digit vehicle identification number (VIN) configuration is not sufficient to handle this many model variations.

“All participants agreed that trying to change VIN configuration was too large a task and instead agreed that more descriptive information be provided by auctions,” said Marks.