Wholesale used-vehicle values slipped for a second straight month in mid-August, with Cox Automotive’s Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index falling 1.2% from July to a reading of 207.4 — landing essentially flat compared with a year ago. The used market has now cooled roughly 2.5% from the record high it hit in March 2026, even though July’s index was still up 1.3% year over year, according to Cox Automotive’s own July report.

Non-adjusted wholesale prices — the figures dealers actually see at auction, before Cox Automotive’s seasonal adjustment — fell 0.8% month over month and 0.2% year over year through mid-August.

One Segment Keeps Defying the Slowdown

Electric vehicles remain the exception to the broader cooldown. Used EV values were up 5% year over year in mid-August, even after a 4.2% pullback from July, according to Cox Automotive. That builds on an even stronger EV showing in the full July index, when used EV values rose 10.5% year over year — the largest gain of any segment the company tracks.

Non-EV values, by contrast, were down 1.4% year over year in mid-August. Cox Automotive’s July report had already flagged non-EV values as nearly stagnant, up just 0.4% year over year for the month.

Among gas-powered segments, compact cars are the strongest performers, up 2.2% year over year in mid-August, followed by luxury vehicles at 0.7%. Midsize cars, SUVs, and pickups all posted year-over-year declines during the same period.

The broader pullback tracks with how 2026 has unfolded for the used market. Values ran hot early in the year, peaked in March, and have been giving back ground gradually ever since as the spring buying season faded and dealers worked through inventory built up during that rally. Mid-August’s flat year-over-year reading is the clearest sign yet that the spring surge has fully unwound at the index level, even as individual segments move in very different directions underneath it.

Supply Is Building, Sales Are Slowing

Wholesale supply — the days’ worth of inventory dealers have on hand — reached 27.7 days as of August 15, up 2.6 days from a year earlier, per Cox Automotive. Sales conversion at auction dropped 4 percentage points year over year to 56.9%, and Cox’s MMR index of three-year-old vehicle values fell roughly 1% since early August.

One measure suggests the slowdown has been orderly rather than sudden: MMR retention, which tracks how closely auction prices track Manheim’s own valuation guide, held at 99.5%, down just 0.3 percentage points year over year.

Taken together, the data points to a used market normalizing after a strong spring rather than accelerating toward new records, with EVs — still working off years of steep depreciation — the one segment still moving in the opposite direction of the rest of the market.