September Sales Mixed Bag So Far
First September sales reports are coming in, and they are a mixed bag. Chrysler says it had the best September since 2007 with sales up 12 percent. GM’s sales are up only 1.5 percent , while Ford reports zero percent growth.
Watch this space for more sales coverage throughout the day.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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Chrysler is doing absolutley fantastic. PROOF that when you build quality, desirable vehicles, people will buy them. If only the other two would see it that way. GM is getting there though. Props to Chrysler. I am an unashamed Chrysler fanboy after their transformation.
I sure wish companies would report individual vehicle volume along with overall sales numbers instead of cherry picking the best of the best for releases. Oops I found GM's but hey TTAC can you compile this? to slim it back how about just the top 10 most selling vehicles in each category for the quarter or month.
Congrats to Chrysler; I have become a real fan of their products over the last 3-4 years. Unfortunately, regardless Chrysler's success we will be reminded by the haters out there that Chrysler had nowhere to go but up and that their sales improvements are based on such low previous years numbers. BUt isn't that the point? Chrysler was near death and is now (i would venture to say) in a better position that GM and Ford. New models are in the pipeline and either available for sales or soon will be. They successfully refreshed poorly performing product into products that are market competitive. They are killing poor product lines (think Caliber) and flooring great replacements (Dart). Chrysler, as long as it is allowed to be Chrysler, has a great future. We should remember, the problems the company found itself in 2008/2009 are a direct result of the "merger" with Daimler and its subsequent sale to Cerberus. How could they hope to perform under those circumstances? Now Chrysler is Chrysler of the 90's; fresh and vibrant.
Good news for Chysler. As a former paid GM fanboi/troll, they were one of the targets we never paid attention to because the product spoke for itself and dwindling sales along with 2 Bankruptcys and being batted around different organizations was the result. Chrysler was a non-starter, we had bigger fish to fry on the Ford, Hyundai, Nissan, Toyota and Honda fanboards. But now that they are refreshed and back on a roll with competitive, even class leading product, I'm sure it will pain my former GM colleagues to see their success coming at the cost of GM their own sales while the ever increasing rental sales make up for those losses in the GM arena. Oops. It also proabably pains them the most that now that Chrysler is an import brand that is owned by the Italians, it's now one more foriegn foe that is shrinking the remaining "Buy Mericun" crowd by luring them with imports. Poor Government Motors. They just can't win.