Contrary to what the industry has seen through the spring and early summer, car value retention was actually stronger in the lanes than trucks last week — just the second time this trend has been spotted in 2013, Black Book’s Ricky Beggs reported.

The overall car segment decline came in at 0.3 percent, or a drop of $41, reported Beggs, senior vice president and editorial director of  Black Book.

In his latest “Beggs on the Used Car Market” video report, he said, “The car segments continued to be steadier, with lower declining levels.

In fact, seven of the 10 car segments Black Book tracks had smaller declining amounts this week than the previous week.

Two of the segments that contributed to this shift were the entry-level cars (down $7) and the compact cars (down $14), both of which saw significantly lower levels of changes than the average.  

This may be in part due to high gas prices, which sit above $4 in many states across the country.

“Although gas prices at the pump dropped by almost $0.04 per gallon over the past week, we are still $0.14 higher than one year ago. This decline follows three weeks of rising prices, so the reaction to those weeks of increases takes a little of the surprise off of the three or four better fuel economy segments being the better retention levels this past week,” Beggs said.

On the other hand, while the truck segments have been trending declines of  less than 0.3 percent for the previous two weeks, which was better than the cars, declined significantly more at 0.47 percent, or $59, this past week, Beggs reported.

This may come as a surprise to the industry, as trucks experienced high retention levels during the first half of the year.

In fact, according to recent wholesale analysis from Manheim analysts, pickup trucks continued to outperform all other used-vehicle segments during the first half of 2013.

Wholesale prices increased 3.6 percent year-over-year due to increased demand from the improvement in the housing industry, combined with limited supplies in the wholesale market, especially for units with less than 100,000 miles.

Highlighting some of the big drops within the truck segments this past week, the compact SUVs declined at a rate of $102, or 0.84 percent, which the compact crossovers declined almost as much with a drop of $94 ,or 0.87 percent.

And the trucks segments have been experiencing increases in week-over-week price declines for six of the precious seven weeks.

This week, Beggs is predicting the same level of change for the trucks and “maybe a slightly larger car segment decline.”

To view the latest “Beggs on the Used Car Market” video report, see below: