Chart Of The Day: What If Dodge And Ram Were Still Just Dodge?

Timothy Cain
by Timothy Cain

As recently as 2009, Dodge was the sixth-best-selling auto brand in the United States.

But through the first four months of 2015, Dodge is the tenth-best-selling auto brand in America. Granted, Dodge volume has fallen 15% year-over-year, but the real reason for Dodge’s lower ranking is that the Dodge of today isn’t the Dodge of yesterday.

Ram, formerly part of the Dodge division, is the twelfth-ranked auto brand in America so far this year.

As a unit, Dodge/Ram is currently – you guessed it – the sixth-best-selling auto brand in America, ahead of FCA’s top-selling Jeep brand. Ahead of Hyundai, too.

Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures. Follow on Twitter @goodcarbadcar and on Facebook.

Timothy Cain
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 12 comments
  • RideHeight RideHeight on May 25, 2015

    Hyundai doesn't sell trucks here, so no nyah-nyahs apply. And I'm pretty sure from viewing the hourly employees' lot that Hyundia and Kia are what happened to Dodge. Oh, and Nissan.

  • V8corvairpickup V8corvairpickup on May 25, 2015

    I thought it was odd that Chrysler killed Eagle and then Plymouth to reduce brands only to spin off Ram and for a very short time SRT into their own product lines. Dodge trucks always had a decent reputation before they became "Ram" branded so a spin-off just seemed to be an odd idea to me.

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    • Pch101 Pch101 on May 25, 2015

      @28-Cars-Later If Cerberus had its way, Chrysler would have been transformed into a truck and minivan maker that badge engineered those vehicles for other automakers while it outsourced its passenger car production to other companies. This is not a surprising strategy for a private equity firm with diverse holdings. The basic idea was to maximize returns by focusing on the one thing that the company was good at doing while minimizing everything else. That strategy would have probably failed for a lot of reasons, but the financial crisis cut that experiment short before it was put to the test. Marchionne is not doing anything close to the same thing. He is trying to create a very large automaker with economies of scale, which is a more textbook approach for the auto industry. In some respects, he is copying the Sloan era of GM, which grew through acquisitions and used multiple brands in an effort to capture niches.

  • 65corvair 65corvair on May 26, 2015

    I would have kept the Dodge name on the trucks. That said, I doubt the Dodge name will be around in ten years.

    • Lorenzo Lorenzo on May 26, 2015

      The way the emissions and fuel economy regulations are double-teaming automakers, in ten years, the muscle car era Challenger and Charger will be gone, and we'll all be driving 3 cylinder, 600cc mini-cars. Dodge will be making niche retro versions of the Omni and Rampage!

  • BklynPete BklynPete on May 29, 2015

    Not offering a Dodge version of the 200 is pretty damning about the brand's long-term future. Seriously, is there a Dodge with reasonable market penetration (Charger, Challenger, Dart, Journey) that could not be sold as a Chrysler, Jeep or RAM? Remember last year's very muted 100th anniversary campaign for Dodge? I'd say that was blowing the brand's last wad. That is especially true if a sell-off is Sergio's end game for the Agnelli family.

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    • Pch101 Pch101 on May 29, 2015

      Dodge is Pontiac, Chrysler is now Chevrobuick, and the trucks can be designed as trucks without any consideration for what a Dodge truck is supposed to look like when compared to a car that carries the same badge. Not a bad plan.

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