tl;dr of the article is that the pandemic caused a major hiccup in the new-car pipeline: first people halted buying, that caused manufacturing to pause. Even wh

tl;dr of the article is that the pandemic caused a major hiccup in the new-car pipeline: first people halted buying, that caused manufacturing to pause. Even when the manufacturing started again, the chip shortage came in. In general, it seems people started being more frugal and smarter with their money: people bought fewer new cards and people had few repos. Of course, what makes a car "used" is time, so fewer new cards last year also means fewer late-model used cards this year. Increased demand and decreased supply. All in all, I think it's a major correction of the prices of used cards. It never made much sense that a new car had half its value fall off when you drive it off the lot, but it was just an accepted fact and a reality (as all value is determined by what's agreed up on explicitly or implicitly).