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Bulgaria's used-car adverts: 12 years old, 177,000 km at year ten, and "200,000 km" as the default
At ten years, 177,000 km in Bulgaria vs 118,000 km in Germany (gap 59,000 km, 95% CI 56,000–64,000).
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Bulgaria's car market runs on used imports: 80.6% of cars first registered there in January–July 2026 were second-hand (Interior Ministry data). We compared 80,070 Bulgarian dealer adverts (30 Sep – 3 Oct 2026) with 68,486 German dealer adverts from the same week.
- Age: the median Bulgarian dealer advert is for a 12-year-old car; the German one, 4. Cars aged 15+ make up 35.9% of Bulgarian adverts and 3.5% of German ones.
- Mileage: at ten years, 177,000 km in Bulgaria vs 118,000 km in Germany (gap 59,000 km, 95% CI 56,000–64,000). A second Bulgarian sample with private sellers shows 183,000 km, between Poland (165,000) and Romania (192,000) in our seven-market study.
- Imports: cars aged 8–14 advertised as imported from Germany show 192,000 km, against 124,000 km for age-matched German dealer stock (gap 68,000 km, 95% CI 65,000–72,000). Italy, not Germany, is the most-named origin (19.6% vs 13.7% of import adverts).
- Rounding: 58% of Bulgarian adverts round mileage to the thousand (Germany: 16%), 17.7% to the ten thousand. Exactly 200,000 km is the most common figure (1,185 adverts). Our hypothesis, written down before the data pull, of a pile-up just below 200,000 km failed overall; it held only for unrounded readings (260 vs 137).
Method: public adverts, cars from 2000–2024; Wilson and bootstrap 95% CIs. Full study, charts and data: https://www.carlytics.eu/bg/research/bulgaria-used-car-mileage-age-2026