How much is the Volkswagen diesel engine emission controversy impacting its certified pre-owned program?

It may be too early in the process to tell. 

On an EPA investigation update section of the Volkswagen of America website, VW said: "Right now, we’ve put a stop sale on all 2.0L 4-cylinder TDI equipped vehicles (new and certified pre-owned), and we’re working with the responsible agencies to obtain approval for the MY16 2.0L TDI vehicles. We are working very hard to get our 4-cylinder TDI business re-started as soon as possible."

As far as the latest CPO numbers, year-to-date figures were still up slightly (1.8 percent) through nine months, and monthly CPO sales in September were down 16.8 percent year-over-year.

But news regarding VW’s issues was public knowledge for only the last 13 days of September, so again, perhaps it’s too early to gauge the overall impact to the automaker’s certified pre-owned program.

At any rate, for any manufacturer’s CPO program, trust and perceived quality are paramount. So, where does VW go from here?

At the time of this writing, representatives from Volkswagen were not available for comment.

However, Alec Gutierrez, Kelley Blue Book’s senior market analyst of automotive insights, shared his thoughts on VW’s CPO program, especially with sales of its TDI (diesel) models affected by the news.

“I think there’s obviously going to be challenges there, especially as it relates to certified pre-owned TDIs,” Gutierrez said in a KBB and Autotrader conference call with reporters last week. “And we know that makes up a pretty good chunk of sales overall for Jetta, and certainly I think it makes up more than 80 percent of Jetta SportWagen sales. I think those models, in particular, are going to be in for a tough time until we know what the impact of the recall is going to be.”

Pricing impact?

Looking at the Cars.com national inventory price figures from just before the VW news broke on Sept. 18 compared to average asking prices at the end of September, the company found a few interesting price changes in TDI listings.

Noting that the prices were set by private sellers and not dealers, just about every model of VW Jetta, Jetta SportWagen, Golf, Beetle and Passat – all VW models that offer both diesel- and gas-powered variants – suffered an average price hit. To be exact, of the 48 different used models investigated, 44 of the models saw average price drops in the 13-day span (of the 24 TDI variants, 22 saw price drops).

Michelle Krebs, senior analyst at Autotrader, had her team investigate the issue on their own site to see if people were listing VW diesel models for cheaper at an attempt to ditch the models.

“At the moment, we saw that private sellers are generally sticking with their prices on the VW diesels that are listed on our site,” Krebs said in the aforementioned call with Gutierrez. “They’ve dropped a little bit, specifically on VW Beetle diesel and the Audi A3 diesel. It looks like what private sellers are trying to do is get as much money as they can. I think what will be interesting to watch is do we see more listings of people wanting to get out of those vehicles? That is something that we’re going to be paying a lot of attention to.”

Gutierrez doesn’t think that values will drop too dramatically.

“I think one thing to consider, too, especially as it relates to the used-car market, is that any given car is only as good as its next monthly price substitute,” Gutierrez said. “I think there is a floor in terms of what’s going to happen with Volkswagen’s values, assuming that they can overcome some of the perception issues that obviously they’re going to have in the near term.

“But ultimately, if it gets to a point where you’re choosing between a relatively full-equipped Jetta or you’re looking at, say, a Corolla or Civic or something else, I don’t think the Jetta’s ever going to drop to a point where it’s a $3,000 priced discount versus a vehicle that offers similar performance and similar utility,” Gutierrez added. “Again, I think there’s always been an expectation that values are going to drop 20 or 25 percent or some huge number, but there is a floor based on competition.”

As Auto Remarketing shared this week, recent data from Kelley Blue Book and Autotrader indicated that VW consumers are trying to get more information about what their vehicle might still be worth, as well.