What Used Car Reconditioning Actually Costs in Canada

The visible costs: parts, labour, sublet

For a typical 4–7 year old trade-in at a Canadian franchise store, reconditioning lands between $1,200 and $2,500 CAD:

• Safety/certification inspection: $150–$300
• Mechanical (fluids, brakes, common wear items): $400–$1,200
• Tires when needed: $600–$1,200 a set
• Body, paint, glass touch-ups: $200–$800 sublet
• Detail: $150–$300

Luxury brands and CPO standards push the range up; newer, low-kilometre units come in under it. Most used car managers know these numbers cold — they approve them line by line.

The invisible cost: days

The cost nobody approves line by line is time. A vehicle worth $25,000 sitting in recon costs roughly:

• Depreciation: used values move every week; $15–$25/day is a conservative estimate
• Floorplan interest: at current Canadian rates, $5–$10/day on a financed unit
• Lost turn: a car that isn't on the front line can't sell, and aged units discount

Call it $30–$50 per vehicle per day. A store reconditioning 60 units a month that shaves three days off its average recovers $5,000–$9,000 a month without touching a single parts or labour line.

Where the days actually go

Audit a slow unit and the work itself is rarely the problem — a brake job takes hours, not days. The days go to handoffs: the inspection that sat unread, the approval that waited for a manager walk-by, detail finding out a car was ready a day late. That's a workflow problem, not a shop problem, and it's why measuring time-per-stage matters more than squeezing another $50 off a parts bill.

Budget for both

Set your recon budget per unit — and set a days-to-frontline target next to it. The stores that treat time as a hard cost are the ones whose used inventory turns fast enough to make the budget conversation easy.