The past four years of wholesale prices have been the most stable since the 1995 launch of the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, according to the company’s 2016 Used Car Market Report released Monday morning.

But can we expect that stability to continue?

Well, there will likely be compression in wholesale prices this year.

“But that’s different from a lack of stability,” Cox Automotive chief economist Tom Webb said in a phone interview with Auto Remarketing.

According to a National Auto Auction Association estimate in Manheim’s report, NAAA-member auctions were believed to have move 9.3 million vehicles last year, which would be a 6.3-percent year-over-year gain. Look for those numbers to jump again this year and next, according to NAAA.

Even with continued gains in used-car volume, Webb still sees the same keen remarketing practices that have kept the market from getting to a point where an extreme downward impact.

“Certainly, their practices are much better. They have been long planning for these volumes,” Webb said. “And in reality, the only thing that could be the monkey wrench would be the thing they can’t control, which is the state of retail demand.

“But in terms of an environment that we have right now, you would assume that the volumes are manageable, in the near-term,” Webb said. 

And consider how wholesale prices trended in 2015. Even with all the various trend lines throughout the year, they still finished just 1.6 percent off the record high from May 2011, according to the report.

Overall, the report — though pointing out the challenges, like narrowing margins —shows a fairly healthy car market, both in terms of retail and wholesale, used and new. Franchised dealers, for example, have enjoyed six straight years of rising used-vehicle sales.

There was a record amount of new-car leases writtem in 2015, with just a shade under 4 million originations — and these cars have the potential to boost already record-breaking certified pre-owned sales.

“Whether you're measuring unit sales, revenues, operating efficiency, or profits; whether you're focused on retail or wholesale; or whether you're interested in new or used, it was another good year for the automotive industry,” Webb said in the Year in Review chapter of the report. “All indications are that the good times will continue to roll awhile longer.”