How do they determine depreciation rates on cars?

[Joel]

The reason I ask is I noticed that Lexus depreciates faster than most luxury car manufacturers. I figure with a name like "Lexus" it would go down a lot slower.

I saw an IS300 on autotrader/autobuys for $16,000 dollars!

 

[POWERED by HONDA]

From what I understand... one of the value books (KBB, Nada, etc)... one of them (or all) determine the cars' value by dealer surveys. The dealer fills out surveys of how much they are selling those cars for... what the market is willing to pay... and they average it up or something...

I could be wrong...

 

[Da Hapa]

Actual sales data.

Lexus typically has much better than avg. resale value. I wouldn't read too much into one car that you pick out of auto trader. Moreover, I wouldn't put too much into the resale values of the IS vs the rest of the Lexus vehicles. The 2001 IS got clobbered with respect to resale due to a number of things including: significant improvments to the 2002 (only one year after being introduced), the 2001 was the initial year for the car, immediate stronger competition from Audi, BMW and now Infinity, subsidized finance rates from all manufactures including Lexus, and price reductions on some packages for the 2002.

Lexus vehicles typically hold their values very well.

 

[milz50]

What about the other 350+ 2001s that are priced at 25K or above on autotrader?

The 7 that were priced at less than 20K consisted of:

Private Seller (seems normal)
Auction
Ecocar
Auction
Auction
Salvage
Auto Parts Seller

The price you found was definitely an anomoly.

I think these cars stickered for about 32K (I could be wrong). If, after 2 years, they are selling for about 25K-27K, then the resale value seems to be good to excellent.