by Ayaan Sundeep Patel

Abstract 

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the price of used cars has fluctuated greatly due to
numerous factors. Inflation and supply chain issues have been at the forefront of the news and
have affected not only cars but most consumer goods. While the majority of society has
seemingly progressed past COVID-19, its effects still linger in the used car market, as prices rose
4.6% from January 2023 to February 2023. Therefore, in an effort to study this phenomenon, I
scraped data from autotrader.co.uk on February 23, 2023. This study aims to understand the
effect of various factors, including mileage, age, and engine size, on various classes of used cars.
The five classes being studied are compact cars, luxury sports sedans, luxury mid-size sedans,
luxury full-size sedans, and luxury SUVs. A log-linear model is used to model the price
determinants of the used cars. A linear model is incorporated to model the depreciation rate of
the cars in the dataset. Lastly, this model is used to predict the three-year depreciation rate for
each car model, which is then compared to the pre-COVID-19 three-year depreciation rate to see
the inflated prices in the UK used car market.

Michelle Connolly, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor
Andrea Lanteri, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor

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