November 2014 Was The Dodge Dart's Best Month Ever
The Chrysler Group reported the Dodge Dart’s best-ever sales month in November 2014 as year-over-year volume jumped 39% to 9012 units.
This was the first time Dart volume climbed beyond 9000 units in a single month. The previous top month for this modern incarnation of the Dart was May of this year, when 8644 were sold.
Yet at best, a best-ever month from the Dart still represents nothing more than a mid-pack performance.
Toyota sold 2.8 Corollas for every Dart sold by Dodge in November. (Year-to-date, Corolla volume is four times stronger.) The Honda Civic and Chevrolet Cruze both sold more than twice as many copies as the Dart did last month. By large margins, the Dart was also outsold by the Volkswagen Jetta, Ford Focus, Hyundai Elantra, and Nissan Sentra.
Through the first eleven months of 2014, Dart volume is down 1% compared with the same period one year ago. However, the trend has been much more favourable since the beginning of May. Over the last seven months, year-over-year Dart volume is up 17%, an 8K-unit gain.
The Dart’s November performance was especially strong in a particularly healthy month for the compact car segment as a whole. Sales of Corolla-class cars are up just 3% this year but jumped 8% in November thanks in large part to big gains from the Corolla (up 14%, equal to 3175 units), Chevrolet Cruze (up 26%, 4657 units), Volkswagen Jetta sedan (up 32%, 3440 units), and the Dart. Nissan Sentra sales jumped 16% and the Kia Forte was up 14% for a combined 2490-unit improvement.
As for its impact on the overall Chrysler Group, the Dart generated 5.3% of Alfa/Chrysler/Dodge/Fiat/Jeep/Ram sales in November of this year, up from 4.6% in November 2013. Chrysler says their four car-selling brands generated a combined 26% year-over-year car improvement last month, although pickup trucks, SUVs, crossovers, and minivans still accounted for 76% of the company’s total volume.
Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures.
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If you follow TTAC's advice of "Hit'em where they ain't", the Dart does that quite well. For less than $20k (before rebates), you can get a car with way more kit, engine, and drivetrain, and interior than the Corolla, Jetta, Focus, Cruze, and Civic. The only car in the segment that offers as much is the Mazda3, but you still only get the 2 litre engine. The Dart's a good car, it just needed to be 200lbs lighter. Oh, and it really is $1m to buy a home in the SF Bay Area. Oakland and San Jose might be less, but not much. Prices are starting around $250-$350k in Salinas, but that's the price to pay.
The compact market tough market to break into, especially with a revived nameplate on an aggressive (read: not like the rest of the class) design. I personally own one with the most critisized powertrain (1.4T DDCT) and am thrilled with it, however I understand that the bold styling in this class doesn't sell volume like civics, corollas, etc. I quite enjoy the platform, and think that although it is not a huge seller (although 9k/month is not bad), it would make a great srt4 platform to continue to elevate dodge as a performance brand along with the Viper, Hellcat twins, And other SRTs.