Resale value ranking – SUVs

Continuing from last issue, I am again going to talk about resale value which is based on the trading price of cars at used car dealers’ 3 years after the cars were bought as new; and this time it is about SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles).

The top was the “Dualis” Nissan Motor’s SUV launched in May 2007 in the domestic market. Having developed it in Europe and manufacturing it in the UK, they are reverse imports. Last time they did reverse imports, it was 13 years ago. It shines the brilliant innovative idea of blending the design and function of SUVs and hatchbacks. It has the height of SUVs and interior of Sedans, it succeeded in attracting people who were sick of Sedans. The resale value of the “20G FOUR” is a very high percentage of 59 – 69%. The second was Honda’s “CR-V”. The new model, launched in autumn of 2006, is receiving high commendation because of its roomy space and sophisticated style. The resale value is 58 – 67%, not much less than the top rate. The third, Nissan’s “Extrail” went through a full-model change in August, 2007 and with the wider use of “scratch guard coat paint” gave a plus factor when thinking about resale. Honda’s “Crossroad 20Xi 4WD” came fourth, Mitsubishi’s “Pajero Long Super Exceed” came fifth. The sixth was Toyota’s “RAV4 SPORT”. All the top 6 are Japanese and made by 4 manufacturers. They are all putting a lot of effort in, aren’t they?

From the seventh and lower all are imported SUVs. “BMW X5 4.8i”, “BMW X3 3.0i”, “Chrysler Jeep Wrangler Sport” and “Volkswagen Touareg V6 Stolz” came in this order. This shows that people have different purposes for these cars from off-road to city riding.

As a matter of fact, this survey was done just before the launch of the “Land Cruiser 200”, so the car was not included. However, soon after its launching, they checked the resale value of the “Land Cruiser 200” and it was easily the top rate of 67 – 74%. The ‘Land Cruiser 200” is very popular not only in Japan but worldwide and is still popular after 3 years. This time, it was done at 3 years but even if they do this survey at 5 years and 10 years, or by mileage at 100,000Km and 200,000Km, I am sure the resale value of land cruisers would come to the top. But if they are old and with high mileage, the buyers will not be in Japan but overseas, so the resale value drops dramatically if it is not manual transmission model. This is because when an automatic car breaks, the whole transmission will have to be changed but with manual transmission, a local mechanics can fix it easily.
After writing about resale value, I do realise that cars are a financial commodity. If we can control the depreciation rate and resale value, there might be some tax benefit. No – it would be a more specialized topic from here, so I had better stop here.


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