Chart Of The Day: What If Dodge And Ram Were Still Just Dodge?
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.
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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.
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.
I would have kept the Dodge name on the trucks. That said, I doubt the Dodge name will be around in ten years.
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.