IRVINE, Calif. -

Industry-wide lease penetration has never been as strong as it was last month, according to Edmunds.com senior analyst Jessica Caldwell, who said rates for European brands were approaching 50 percent in December.

This helped luxury brands like Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Jaguar notch best-ever annual new-vehicle sales.

But the tentacles of this leasing surge stretch far beyond luxury-car lots. Look for some effects down the road on the used-car side, as well, Caldwell said.

“Car shoppers responded overwhelmingly to the advertised holiday lease deals and they turned out the highest single-month lease rate (27.5 percent) on record. Amazingly, almost half of all European branded vehicles sold in December — including many of the most popular luxury brands — were leased,” Caldwell said.

“It’s entirely possible that we look back at 2013 as the ‘Year of the Lease,’ and it will be fascinating to see if this becomes an even bigger trend in 2014,” she continued. “Used car buyers may even expect to see prices come down sharply three years from now when all these leased vehicles come back to market.”

As for the leases coming back into the market this year, CNW Research said last month it expects about 3.1 million leases to end in 2014.  In some good news for certified pre-owned programs, CNW believes that 1.38 million of these lease terminations will be “prime” options for the CPO market.

Separately, in a CNW presentation from earlier in December, the company provided an end-of-lease action chart comparing, brand-by-brand, the percent of vehicles coming off lease that were retained by the dealership in 2005 against the proportion retained in 2013.

A significant majority of the brands included in CNW’s data showed increases between 2005 and 2013, many of them by double-digit percentages.

Such an example provided in the presentation was the Ford brand. In 2005, 17.5 percent of vehicles coming off lease were retained by the dealer. In 2013, that number jumped to 31.4 percent.

Similarly, Kia climbed from 11.9 percent off-lease retention by dealer in 2005 to 23.4 percent.

“Why is that important? Because all of these vehicles that are retained by the dealer, a vast majority of them go into certified,” CNW president Art Spinella said.

“And if they are in fact certified, they are pulling in, on average, from $2,200 to $2,500 more transaction price than a comparable vehicle that is not certified.”