Buying a new car should be a long-term commitment. They’re expensive, and depreciation kills the car’s resale value as soon as you drive it off the lot—money you’ll never recover.
But even the potential financial hit isn’t severe enough for some to warrant keeping a car for more than a year. Some buyers resell their new car within the first year, and a new study reveals which cars buyers can’t wait to get rid of.
It should be no surprise that the list is packed with luxury models. According to a new iSeeCars study, nearly 30 percent of Land Rover Discovery Sport buyers resell the SUV within just one year. The Porsche Macan is second, followed by three Mercedes-Benz models—the CLA, GLA, and GLB.
Land Rover has two other cars on the list, the Range Rover Evoque and the regular Discovery. These are the top 10 cars resold within a year:
- Land Rover Discovery Sport – 28.3%
- Porsche Macan – 22.2%
- Mercedes-Benz GLB – 21.2%
- Mercedes-Benz CLA – 20.4%
- Mercedes-Benz GLA – 16.7%
- Land Rover Range Rover Evoque – 16.4%
- Mercedes-Benz C-Class – 14.0%
- Land Rover Discovery – 13.6%
- BMW 5 Series – 13.4%
- Jaguar F-Pace – 13.3%
The industry average is just 3.6 percent. There are several likely factors as to why luxury cars dominate the list. iSeeCars Executive Analyst Karl Brauer said:
'Every model in the top 10 ranking of new cars most likely to be resold is a luxury vehicle. This suggests luxury buyers are either not doing enough research before buying, are overextending themselves financially, or are just incredibly fickle when it comes to their new car purchases.'
The study also looked at car brands overall, and, shockingly, Porsche cars have the highest return rate at 16 percent, by a wide margin. Jaguar, the second most returned brand, has a 10.7 percent resale rate. Mercedes-Benz, Land Rover, and Infiniti round out the top five, but here’s the complete list:
- Porsche – 16.0%
- Jaguar – 10.7%
- Mercedes-Benz – 9.1%
- Land Rover – 8.9%
- Infiniti – 6.5%
- BMW – 6.2%
- Genesis – 6.1%
- Audi – 6.0%
- Mini – 6.0%
- Maserati – 5.7%
According to iSeeCars, Porsche’s placement at the top is largely driven by the Macan, although the Cayenne ranks among the top 20 most resold models.
iSeeCars compiled this data by analyzing over 18.5 million individual new car sales from model years 2022-2025 in 2023 and 2024. The publication used VINs to determine whether a recently sold new car was re-listed between four months and one year after its sale date.
Source: iSeeCars
