This Is the Hottest-Selling Used Car in America

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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This Is the Hottest-Selling Used Car in America

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The car industry in America is a mess. A shortage of the microchips used in electronics and navigation systems has shuttered assembly lines, hurt dealers and undermined manufacturer earnings. Because of the shortage, some cars are flying off dealer lots.

Car prices, both new and used, are among the fastest rising items in the consumer price index, well into the double-digit percentages year over year. Rising interest rates may complicate the car market further, as they will affect what car companies and banks charge car buyers for loans.

Among the likely consequences of these shortages is that people will keep cars longer. Last year, the average age of a vehicle on the road was over 12 years. Improved quality of manufacturing and product design has made it possible for people to keep cars with well over 100,000 miles on them.

Most experts believe the semiconductor shortage will last into next year. That means auto inventories will remain small.
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One primary measure of inventory and car demand is what the industry calls “day to sell.” That is the period from when a car is delivered to a dealer to when it is sold and a customer takes possession. The figure for used cars across the industry was 52.9 days in March, iSeeCars reported. That was well under the average of the past few decades.

iSeeCars executive analyst Karl Brauer commented: “Inventory constraints have persisted for new cars due to supply chain issues in Asia and Europe, and the new car market is struggling to keep up with pent-up demand.”

To find the hottest selling used cars in America, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the iSeeCars data on 150,000 new and used cars sold in March. The top 20 fastest-selling used vehicles averaged 35.0 days and sell, 1.4 to 1.9 times faster than the average used vehicle.

The trend toward the popularity of electric vehicles (EVs), which began recently, has not ended. Three of the 20 fastest-selling used cars were Tesla models. Several others were EVs built by the world’s largest manufacturers. This trend will continue if gasoline prices remain at over $4 for a gallon of regular. Consumers may be pushed toward lighter cars with smaller engines, and those that use no gas at all.

The fastest-selling used car is the Tesla Model X. This is the EV maker’s sport utility vehicle. Its average days to sell are a very low 28. Like many Tesla vehicles, it is very expensive, with an average price of $90,406.
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Click here to see which is the worst car brand in America.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

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