I wonder if COVID distorted the market enough to show up here?

I have anecdotes of friends/family/coworkers who bought cars (or second cars for the household) to avoid public transport.

And 2nd hand prices for cars gere (Australia) went batshit insane for a while during and as we chose to pretend that COVID was over - and those artificially inflated prices are mostly over now.

Not just the extra demand from people avoiding public transport but supply chain disruption caused by COVID affected the supply of new cars (and spare parts), so people who wanted a new car were now considering new-ish cars.

We had a whiplash effect in the US.

In late 2020 and early 2021, Used car prices plummeted due to so many people trading in 2nd vehicles. I remember tire kicking a 2008 vehicle that was 2000$ then...

Whiplash on used cars started later in 2021, as people were starting to go back out more and in some cases beginning to RTO.

The combination of rising new car prices and rising interest rates in 2022 only further hurt the market. On top of that the newer cars are in many cases less reliable so people are holding on longer.

Fwiw I just double checked and For reference that same 2008/make/mileage is now more like 5000$...

I have colleagues who bought new EVs and made money selling them one year later, because the market was so wild back then. For a while you could still add some deductions here, some credit there, sell an old car and “girl math” your way to a “free car”. Now people are surprised pikachu when the bubble has burst.