Despite cooling new-car sales, average transaction prices are up, according to Kelly Blue Book, a sister division of Autotrader within Cox Automotive. KBB reports the average transaction price (ATP) for a new light vehicle, such as a car, pickup truck or SUV, was $35,444 in February. Although that’s a drop of $96 (down 0.3 percent) from January, it’s an increase of $722 (2.1 percent) over February 2017.
The big year-over-year ATP gains were Volkswagen at 7.1 percent, General Motors at 3.5 percent and Toyota at 3.4 percent. Among market segments, high-performance cars posted the highest year-over-year gains at 6.8 percent. High-end luxury cars were next with a 4.7 percent gain.
The largest ATP drops from January 2018 to February 2018 were Volkswagen at 4.3 percent and Ford Motor Company at 1.0 percent.
According to the automotive trade publication Automotive News, overall new-car sales were down nearly 0.9 percent for the first two months of 2018 from the same period last year. New-car sales in February were down 2.8 percent from January. This is the continuation of a several-month trend of weaker sales numbers.
