The latest figures released by the Alliance & Leicester Car Price Index show that the price of new cars fell year-on-year by just 0.3% in January, but prices are still roughly 12% lower than they were in January 2000.

The Index shows four of the past five months have seen month-on-month price rises. In January the only significant new car price falls were in the MPV and Supermini car categories, which saw year-on-year falls of 1.9% and 1.6% respectively. Conversely prices of 4x4s rose by 4.8% year-on-year.

Nearly-new car prices in January recorded a year-on-year fall of 4.3%. However, this was well down on the fall of 8.8% recorded in December. All categories of nearly-new car saw price falls including Executive Cars and City Cars, dropping 8.4% and 6.5% respectively year-on-year.

Three-year old used cars saw a January fall in value of 2.9% year-on-year, considerably lower than the 7.4% fall witnessed in December but closer to the 2.1% year-on-year fall seen in November. Some categories saw an increase in values, with the price of small cars rising by 2.0%. Upper medium 'family'cars saw the largest fall, of 6.5%, closely followed by superminis which dropped in price by 6.0% year-on-year.