At Fiat USA, You Know It's Bad Because Even The Subcompact Crossover Is Flopping

It just keeps getting uglier.

In ten consecutive months, U.S. sales at the Fiat brand have declined on a year-over-year basis. The run of declines began six months after Fiat launched an all-new model, the 500X, in America’s burgeoning subcompact crossover segment. The downward trend continued in the third quarter of 2016, through the launch of the Mazda-based 124 Spider. The losses accrued in Fiat’s U.S. showrooms were certainly worsened by 21 consecutive months of decreased volume reported by the aging Fiat 500.

But it’s the 500X that ought to shoulder much of the blame. Wasn’t the answer to the brand’s lack of mainstream appeal surely to be found in a segment that doubled in size in 2015?

Perhaps not.

LIGHT AT THE START OF THE TUNNEL

Yet while segment-wide growth continued after the 500X first crested the 2K marker — year-over-year volume jumped 130 percent in November 2015 and 175 percent in December 2015 — the 500X’s forward momentum was abruptly halted.

By January of this year, Fiat was selling less than half as many 500Xs in America as the company had three months earlier. On a month-to-month basis, 500X sales decreased in November 2015 and then in seven of 2016’s first nine months, horrendous results for a recently launched model.

It was during that third quarter that the dearth of demand for the 500X became most apparent.

Fewer than 1,000 copies of the 500X were sold in July, a modest 12-unit year-over-year decline but the lowest total sales for the model since its first month on sale 13 months earlier.

August 500X volume slid 13 percent as subcompact crossover volume rose 5 percent.

In September, sales of the Fiat 500X tumbled to only 839 units, a 26-percent year-over-year drop and a 15-month low.

Meanwhile, the boxy Jeep Renegade that shares a platform with the curvy Fiat 500X is the top-selling member of a subcompact crossover category that’s grown by a third this year.

It’s a segment that grew 12 percent during the last quarter, a period in which Fiat 500X sales declined 14 percent. Over the last three months, the Fiat 500X’s direct competitors combined for nearly 15,000 additional sales compared with the same stretch one year earlier.

Yet the 500X, with little to lose, managed to drop 437 sales in the same time span.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?

With four models, Fiat is on track to 34,000 new vehicles in the United States in calendar year 2016, a 10,000-unit sales decline from 2012, when Fiat was a one-model brand in America.

[Images: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles]

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.