GAINESVILLE, GA - The champion of the used-car market this week was the fact that 53 percent of the changes the editors of Black Book made were increases. 

"We haven't had this level of positive changes since the week ending last May 20^th," said Ricky Beggs, VP and managing editor for Black Book. "Looking at an average of all the changes, the overall difference for the week was slightly less than -$5. This amount was definitely supported by the various dealer and auctioneer comments we heard such as 'expecting an upturn' and a more enthusiastic 'on the verge of busting loose within the next 2 to 3 weeks.' "

With slightly more Average condition values adjusted than Clean, and more of them being increases, this is a reflection of the interest and demand due to the tax season type cars and trucks, according to Beggs.

"With the overall uptick, we also made a record number of daily adjustments throughout the week. At 3280 per day this was almost 400 more per day than the previous high level mark for the week ending August 12, 2011, when the overall change level was -$119," Beggs said.

For the first time in at least the past 12 weeks, Black Book not only have one car segment, but two that increased in price week over week. The Entry Mid-size Cars (EMC) increased by $1 while the Entry Level Cars (ELC) increased by $12. Three other segments declined by $22 or less for the week: Full-size Cars (FSC) declined by $22 while the Compact Cars (SCC) and Upper Mid-size Cars (UMC) declined by only -$15 and -$11 respectively.

Within the truck segments the overall change of -$15 was very similar to the past 3 weeks. The Compact Pickups (CPT) have increased 5 of the past 6 weeks and were also joined by the Full-size SUVs (FSU), which increased by $9. Showing the overall stability of the trucks, there were 6 of the 14 segment types that declined by a very small $7 or less.

"As we gathered and analyzed all the market data this week, another sign of the increasingly active market was an increased level of data on quite a few more late model vehicles, those from model years 2010 through 2012," Beggs said. "From this analysis we included market driven data values on an additional 68 vehicle listings. These were a mixture of highline cars, full-size trucks, entry mid-size cars as well as compact and mid-size crossovers."