Prices of Cars in Japanese Auctions

Generally it is thought that car prices constantly go down. Many think that once a car is bought cheaply, it can always be bought at that price. On the contrary, as in other markets, prices go both up and down. The price fluctuation trends can be summarized as follows

End of March Period

Prices fall in this period. There are mainly two reasons for this price fall.
1) For a lot of companies this is the end of the accounting year and they need to sell some of the cars to pay taxes and other accounting purposes.

2) The cars bought for display aimed at university students that weren't sold are put back on the market. The university year starts in April and sales for students go down then.

Mid May
Prices start increasing. Excess stock has now been sold off through the auctions, prices come back up to previous levels

Late October to December
Prices fall in this period. The most expensive time of the year in Japan for a company is the end of the year. Bonuses, year end parties require companies to sell off stock to get good cash position. This is specially observed at the end of December.

Other Factors
Other factors can cause a price of a certain type of vehicle to drop without apparent reason and unrelated to the periodic price fluctuations. The drop in the Irish and English currency in 1998 caused Pajero prices to nose-dive for the first time in 2 years for example.