How much has your car depreciated?

The Infiniti G37 coupe is very compelling in terms of its driving performance. It looks great, but it feels great to drive and that translates into very strong resale value.

The Chevrolet Corvette has an incredible reputation for resale value. It has become the epitome of resale value for the domestics and it proves that domestic manufacturers can build vehicles with high resale value.

BMW is a brand with very strong, almost iconic presence in the marketplace. Their BMW 6 series wins for luxury car with best resale value. It has great styling. It has a lot of fun-to-drive aspects to it. And it’s built in limited numbers as well, so you’re not going to see one on every street corner. All of these things key into very good resale value.

There’s only one vehicle from a domestic manufacturer, the Chevy Corvette, on your top 10 list.  We hear that American automakers are doing a better job of building quality vehicles. That hasn’t translated into better resale value yet?
The domestics have been rising in terms of resale value. Over the past 15 or 20 years their reputation in the marketplace for reliability, quality, and even styling had fallen way down. Now we’re seeing a big change in that at Kelly Blue Book.

In fact, the brands that are improving the most are domestic brands. They’re not into the top 10 yet, but we’re going to see, we think, many more domestic brands among the top 10 in terms of resale value over the next several years.

I’m actually surprised that more vehicles from Asian manufacturers didn’t make it into the top 10.
That is interesting. Asian manufacturers do quite well. The ones you think of in particular – Honda, Acura, and Toyota — do quite well. Scion actually outdoes the Toyota brand these days in terms of resale. And of course Scion is a division of Toyota. It has done remarkably well. Toyota is rejuvenating what it is doing with Scion, so we are seeing some Asian brands with some very strong presence in the list.

What sort of things can owners do to enhance the resale value of whatever car they buy?
They should maintain their vehicle very well. Keep records of the maintenance and pay a whole lot of attention to the appearance of the vehicle. Wax that vehicle and keep the interior clean. That means a lot of money when it comes to resale time. These are things you can do without spending very much money at all.

More information

• Kelly Blue Book Best Resale Value Awards 2008
• Consumer Reports: Reliability Trends

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