Second-hand market: Public holidays had an impact on May 2026 results

The second-hand car market lost volume in May 2026. According to AAA Data, 409,141 transactions were recorded during this period, down 4% from last year. We need to go back to August 2025 to find evidence of a lower score (373,985 units).

Of course, structurally the sector is not experiencing its best hours, but it is possible to put this weak performance recorded in the table into perspective. This year the calendar for May consisted of 17 days when the professionals were open to the public; This was two days less than in 2025. Therefore, the transaction rate per business day stands at just over 24,000 units, or 7.3% above last year’s score.

Brands benefited in a certain way. In terms of the number of invoices, they were once again down 9.9% to 154,025 purchases, but over the equivalent number of business days their activity increased by 3.3% to 8,107 cumulative resales per day.

At the same time, just over 241,400 used cars were negotiated directly between individuals. This is a total improvement of 0.3% in one year. In comparison, daily volume reached 9,060 units, only 15.4% better than May 2025.

Source: AAA Data

A basic downward trend

Five months later, there were a total of 2,165,851 transactions across all channels in France. In absolute terms, the market loses 4.5% from one year to the next. When we look at the ratio, the decrease was limited to 21,444 units with 2.6%.

In this timescale, distributors accounted for 865,520 units, a loss of 8.8% in absolute value compared to 2025. The retail channel limited the loss (-1.3%) to over 1.218 million units.

The French market witnessed 5.294 million transactions in the last twelve calendar months. The second-hand automobile sector recorded a decrease of 1.9% in absolute value. Here again there were two fewer business days on the calendar, but that doesn’t change much in the 1.1% downtrend.