Chrysler Sales Drop 39%

by Edward Niedermeyer

April 1st, 2009 8:58 PM

Why, that news is so good that the Freep is happy to throw ChryCo the irony-free headline. April Fools! Sales are actually down 39 percent compared to March 2008. It’s just that Chrysler hasn’t topped 100k monthly sales since September. Does this look like a turnaround to anyone? Bueller? Jim Press? “The market is starting to show small signs of life which need to be nourished like seedlings.” What a touching image. Tiny seedlings struggling to life under a pile of government cash. Please, describe these plucky little plants for us, Mr. Press. “The fact that we exceeded 100,000 units for the first time since last fall is encouraging, and evidence that our improved quality, improved mileage as well as value represented in Employee Pricing Plus Plus are just what the doctor ordered for recession-wary customers who are reluctant to make long-term purchases. It’s too early to see a trend, but spring shows signs of hope.” If showing signs of hope is your job description, perhaps. But how did the federal proclamation ( PDF) of “the poor quality of [Chrysler’s] existing product portfolio” affect the sales seedlings?

The phrase “bloodbath” leaps to mind. By brand, Dodge fared the best with a dismal 33 percent drop in sales; Jeep fell 41 percent; and the dead-alive Chrysler brand shed 61 percent. Sebring jokes are taking their toll—the iconically worst car in America lost 78 percent of its sales compared to last March. The only Chrysler model with less than a 40 percent sales loss was the Town & Country, down 34 percent. Jeep’s Compass and Patriot were both down by over 70 percent, while the Wrangler proved its eternal appeal with a 16 percent increase. The only other ChryCo product with improved month-on-month sales was the Dodge Journey, which was up a statistically irrelevant 127 percent compared to last year’s supply-limited March performance. On the other end of the Dodge scale, the Durango was down 81 percent.

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Fallout11 on Apr 02, 2009

Midnighthour- Loans are temporary, and are repaid at some agreed-upon future timeframe, with interest. Bankrupt and soon to be liquidated companies do not repay loans. Thus loans they are not, but merely taxpayer-funded handouts.

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Psarhjinian on Apr 02, 2009
windswords: The higher price of the Flex doesn’t account for how it’s getting trounced in the market place by GM’s Lambda’s, which are priced similarly. This is not the reason the Flex is not selling like they expected it to. Well, yes and no. The cheaper Lambdas are cheaper than the Flex, both in terms of MSRP and to what levels GM dealers are willing and able to stoop to in order to move them. The Flex really is the better car, but (at least when I went shopping) you could get a Traverse for under CA$30K easily; the Flex wasn't available at that price. It's a nifty vehicle and all, but it's too expensive for the times. The Journey and Traverse make more sense to more people. Isn’t that what many of the B&B here say the auto companies should do? Sell basic, reliable transportation? Or can only Toyota do that? If you believe JD Powers the trendline for problems per 100 cars has been steadily declining for years now. I believe JD Powers' data as well as Consumer Reports. I'm also a big believer in "if you're selling a product for fifty percent less than your competitor, what are you cutting out in order to do it?". In the case of the Caravan, it's pretty obvious that a) Chrysler decontented the damn thing to within an inch of it's life, b) the 3-5 and 5-10 year fall-off in reliability is awful and c) they aren't even trying anymore and it shows (when three of the five new vans in my local dealer's lot were showing tailgate warping, that's not a good sign). I wanted to like the Caravan, I really did. It's a locally-made product and it is, if you ignore the problems of it's parentage, an intelligent, competent and utilitarian vehicle (unlike, say, the thoroughly wretched Chevy Uplander). But you really have to surrender a lot of misgivings about Chrysler and Cerberus to put money on it. I ended up buying a used Sienna CE, topped up the extended warranty and kept my money local otherwise.

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