The numbers
What a year of age actually costs, model by model
Numbers computed 27 August 2026 · around 40,000 miles · our 24 deepest car markets
Most depreciation tables compare a new car with a three-year-old one and call it a day. That mixes age with mileage, spec drift and the new-car discount all at once. This one asks a cleaner question: holding mileage still at around 40,000 miles, what does the fitted market value of the same model do as it turns one year older?
The answer varies more than the folklore suggests. Some cars shed a fifth of their value at every birthday; others barely notice one — and the gentle ones are not always the obvious badges.
Fastest to shed value
| Model | Newest fitted value | Latest year’s drop | Avg per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Land Rover Range Rover Evoque | £32,500 | −£20 | −10.9% |
| Land Rover Range Rover Sport | £63,450 | −£0 | −9.7% |
| Mercedes-Benz C Class | £27,500 | −£386 | −9.3% |
| Kia Sportage | £22,249 | −£0 | −8.9% |
| Audi A3 | £26,700 | −£103 | −7.7% |
| Mercedes-Benz A Class | £19,990 | −£0 | −7.6% |
| Toyota C-HR | £25,195 | −£2,405 | −7.5% |
| Peugeot 3008 | £21,695 | −£0 | −7.2% |
Barely notice a birthday
- Toyota Yaris−0.8%/yr
- Volkswagen T-Roc−1.5%/yr
- Skoda Fabia−1.7%/yr
- Audi A1−1.8%/yr
- MINI Countryman−2%/yr
A gentle curve cuts both ways: cheap to own, but the used examples you’re shopping for are holding their price too. The steep ones are where a two-year-old car gets genuinely interesting.
Method, in one paragraph
For each model we take the fitted fair-value grid — a quantile regression on mileage and year over every live advert — and read the median value at the mileage band nearest 40,000 miles, for consecutive fitted years only. Each step is one genuine year of ageing at held mileage; the headline is the mean of those steps, over the most recent five. Models need at least two clean steps to be ranked. Everything recomputes on every visit, from the current market.
Want the full curve for a model?
Every model page draws it, with the live adverts plotted on top.