Can Jeep Flip Flop? Will The American Consumer Continue To Vote For A Compass/Patriot Successor?

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ fourth-quarter reveal of Jeep’s replacement for the Compass and Patriot comes after mountains of late-in-life success for the small SUV duo.

In Jeep’s U.S. home market, sales of the Compass — known as one of The Worst Cars Today since way back in 2006 — soared to an all-time record high of 66,698 units in calendar year 2015. Through the first five months of 2016, Compass sales are up 72 percent, a gain of 16,411 sales for Jeep’s lowest-volume model.

The Patriot, meanwhile, topped the list of TTAC’s The Worst Cars Today in 2016, sales of the Patriot also having shot up to record levels of 118,464 units in 2015. Year-over-year, U.S. Patriot sales through the first five months of 2016 grew 4 percent to 52,067 units. Combined, the Dodge Caliber-based tandem essentially produce one-quarter of Jeep’s sales in the brand’s home market, outselling every other individual Jeep nameplate.

Against this backdrop of outrageous success for two critically panned trucklets with seven-slot grilles, a single Jeep candidate will step in to fill their shoes at a Brazilian debut later this year. Jeep already has a subcompact SUV: the Renegade. Jeep already has a small and affordable off-roader: the non-Unlimited Wrangler. Jeep already has an entry to challenge America’s leading crossovers: the Cherokee.

Can Jeep find space in tight quarters for yet another small SUV? If not, we’re about to see the first Jeep flop since the Commander arrived in 2005.

Yet Jeep has already proven the brand can find high-volume niches inside its SUV-only lineup. Who’d have thought the Compass and Patriot would rapidly grow their sales while Jeep contributed 42,549 Renegade sales to the cute-ute craze in early 2016?

Fleet sales are undoubtedly a factor, though FCA spokesperson Ralph Kisiel told TTAC, “The Jeep Compass, in particular, has been performing well this year on the retail level.”

Meanwhile, a non-FCA industry source confirmed with TTAC that the Patriot derives an above-FCA-average percentage of its volume from retail sales.

Regardless of the source of the buyer — daily rental fleets or individual consumers — Jeep carved out continually available space for the antiquated Compass and Patriot by amplifying the affordability quotient. The least costly all-wheel-drive 2016 Jeep Compass is priced from $22,690, but standard discounts drop the price to $22,190 and Jeep further incentivizes with 1.9-percent financing over seven years. Edmunds.com’s pricing tools say a typical Compass Sport customer pays 6-percent below sticker. The more popular Patriot’s most expensive all-wheel-drive trim level starts at just $27,635, but with $2,500 in rebates, the price falls to $25,980. There are nine less costly Patriot variants.

But can a new Jeep entry be so inexpensive? The Patriot and Compass are easily discountable 10-year-olds, moneymakers with costs that have long since been paid for.

Moreover, we’ve seen FCA fail at replacing a Mitsubishi-related PM/MK-platform vehicle in the recent past.

Say what you will about the Dodge Caliber — no, really, we want to hear you say it — but the Chrysler Group managed to sell 277,461 Calibers in America in its first three years on the market, 2006 through 2008. Its successor — the Dodge Dart about which FCA boss Sergio Marchionne once said, “If you’re a serious carmaker and you can’t make it in this segment, you’re doomed” — is quite literally doomed. FCA won’t redevelop a Dart successor, recognizing apparently that they can’t make it in this segment. Fewer than 235,000 Darts were sold in America in its first full three years, an even worse sales performance than what the dreaded and dreadful Caliber achieved. FCA is now selling barely more than 5,000 Darts per month in the United States, well below the Caliber’s 8,400/month pace at its peak.

As already mentioned, Jeep has been known to flub a new vehicle launch. The ghastly Commander didn’t offer the requisite third-row space of a big SUV, was terrible to look at, and did 13 miles per gallon in the city (Hemi 4×4) after a fuel price spike when consumers were veering away from light trucks and the Toyota Highlander Hybrid travelled twice as far on a gallon of fuel. U.S. Commander volume tumbled 69-percent between 2006 and 2008.

We live in a new age now, however, an age in which the 2014 Cherokee fended off styling criticism to become the best-selling model at America’s top seller of SUVs and crossovers.

And it’s that fact, the realization that Jeep is operating in a market and an era in which SUVs/crossovers now generate nearly 4 in 10 U.S. new vehicle sales as the only non-luxury SUV-only brand, that solidifies the ComPatriot successor’s likelihood of victory.

Can a Jeep flop? Sure, it’s possible. But can a new, small, affordable Jeep flop in this market at this time? Almost certainly not. What’s past is prologue. We’re not looking for Jeep guidance from polls with a high margin of error, a small sampling size, and skewed demographics. These are results.

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.