The Price of This Used Car Is Up 50% in a Year

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 1, 10:30AM EDT

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The Price of This Used Car Is Up 50% in a Year — © Courtesy of Mitsubishi Motors North America

Car prices have skyrocketed because of both supply and demand. People who wanted to buy cars essentially were locked out of dealers for months because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just as buying picked up, the car manufacturing supply chains were hit by a shortage of the semiconductor chips that run their electronic systems. According to The Wall Street Journal, this shortage could last many months. Some of the world’s largest car companies actually have had to shutter assembly lines temporarily.

The imbalance of supply and demand has driven a sharp increase in both new and used car prices. One of the salient points of a new iSeeCars report titled “The Used Cars With the Largest and Smallest Price Increases Amid the Microchip Shortage” is that people who own used cars that have gained in value may find this a good time to trade them in. That is, of course, if there is a supply of the new car models they want to buy.

In the August study, iSeeCars looked at 1.9 million used cars. The average used car price rose 26.2% from August 2020. That translates into $6,454. iSeeCars analyst Karl Brauer commented: “As the microchip shortage-related plant shutdowns continue, and with the aftermath of Hurricane Ida expected to further elevate prices, there appears to be no relief in sight for used car shoppers.”

The used car that gained the most in value in August was the Mitsubishi Mirage, which was up 49.9% to $13,398. Mitsubishi markets it as a small “city-friendly” car. It is easy to see the logic. The Mirage gets 36 miles per gallon in the city and 43 mpg on the highway. The compact hatchback comes in three models.
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Interestingly, the Mirage gets poor reviews from car research firms and media. Car and Driver ranks it 2.5 out of 10, describing the Mirage as “an unrefined small car with a down-market interior and a puny three-cylinder engine.”

These were the 10 used cars with the largest price increases:

Mitsubishi Mirage (49.9%)
Nissan LEAF (46.8%)
Chevrolet Spark (44.7%)
Mercedes-Benz G-Class (40.2%)
MINI Hardtop 2 Door (34.8%)
Lincoln Navigator (34.5%)
Kia Forte (32.6%)
Lincoln Navigator L (32.3%)
Chevrolet Camaro (31.0%)
Kia Soul (30.6%)

Click here to see which is the fastest-selling car in America.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.