WOODCLIFF LAKE, N.J. –

When the calendar rolled past the close of the third quarter this past Friday, certified pre-owned sales reached the second-highest quarterly figure ever.

Autodata Corp. reported on Tuesday that Q3 CPO sales came in at 675,725 units, representing a 3.4-percent lift year-over-year.

Looking at the quarterly data from a sequential viewpoint, Q3 marked just a 0.4 percent softening from the second-quarter amount that just happened to be the best quarterly figure ever.

The industry compiled the third-quarter figure by turning 208,070 CPO units in September. That amount marked a 1.4-percent softening versus September of last year. Though there weren’t any all-records reported during September, Cadillac reported its strongest certified sales in nearly seven-and-a-half years, Autodata said.

Perhaps the CPO market might have set a new quarterly record for the second stanza in a row had September sales not lost some steam to close Q3. Autodata pointed out last month’s figure marked a 10.8-percent drop-off versus August.

Autodata also mentioned there were 25 selling days in September of this year as compared to 26 in August. A year ago, there also were 25 selling days.

The September 2016 daily selling rate was down 1.4 percent from a year ago and down 7.2 percent from a month earlier.