I dropped by the spanking new headquarters of CarGurus in Boston on Monday for coffee with the CEO, Jason Trevisan.
CarGurus calls itself the internet’s most-visited car sales site; Carfax technically gets more traffic, but a chunk of that is related to vehicle history reports and not sales.
CarGurus has already seen the new wave of import tariffs drive more people to buy cars before they took effect at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. But I was curious to hear how Trevisan expects they’ll affect car buying going forward.
It turns out he is in the market for a new car himself — and, of course, he uses his own site.
“New car prices are going to rise because of the tariffs,” Trevisan said. “And some of the new car demand will shift to other new cars that have less of a tariff increase, and some will shift into used.” As a result, “we’re already seeing used car prices rise” as more consumers are “hustling to shop for and buy used cars.”
Trevisan expects used car prices will likely increase by 10 to 15% in the near term. Overall, he says, “we’re seeing more shopping today than we were two weeks ago.”
CarGurus charges dealers a monthly subscription fee to market their inventory through the website — so its business doesn’t benefit directly from higher or lower car prices. The company brought in $894 million in revenue in its 2024 fiscal year and employs 1,250 people.
Analysis from Cox Automotive predicts that the new 25% tariff on imported vehicles will hit roughly 80% of cars under $30,000, including popular models such as the Nissan Sentra, Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla. But Cox’s report, issued last Friday, says that the price bump on specific vehicle brands is difficult to predict “as each automaker will handle the tariffs differently.”
Trevisan tells me his family owns three cars — a Chevy Tahoe, Jeep Wrangler and Toyota 4Runner — and they’re currently in the market for a fourth for one of their kids.
Trevisan said that he’d been planning to shop for a used small SUV or cross-over vehicle this summer. “But I have now pulled it up, because I think used car prices are going to rise.”
Instead of having a June deadline for the purchase, Trevisan says he’s now working with an April deadline: “I think we’re going to do it soon.”
