Canadian October 2006 Sales Report

Canadian Sales : October 2006

Chrysler Group:
Oct. 2006 - 15,020
Oct. 2005 - 14,894
Sept. 2006 - 16,191

Therefore the CG was UP 0.8% or 126 units relative to last year same year and DOWN 7.2% or 1,171 units relative to last month. The Chrysler Group is off from its high this year, that occured in August, which was a strong month of 20,252 units sold.

Chrysler Group Year-to-Date:
2005 - 186,296
2006 - 184,764
Which translates to a decline of 0.8% or a loss of 1,532 units. That is a gain of 126 units over last months difference.

Sales of Interest for October
DaimlerChrysler reported that 3,726 cars and 11,294 trucks for a total of 15,020 units sold during the month of October.
Car sales increased 27.7 per cent while truck sales decreased 5.7 percent for the month.

Sales number for particular models included the Dodge Charger sold 768 units up 63% (6,153 units Y-to-D), Chrysler Pacifica sold 222 units up 64%, and Dodge Durango which sold 270 units up 26%. Dodge Ram pickup sales are up 7.2 per cent for the year to 33,492 units.
Newer model had a great month including the Dodge Caliber which sold 1,903 units and 16,077 Y-to-D, the Jeep Compass 591 units, the Dodge Nitro selling 311 units and the new Jeep Wrangler selling 304 units.

Notes of Interest
Toyota outsold the Chrysler Group and Ford Motor Company for the month of October 16,010 to 15,020 and 15,922 units respectively.  By including the sales of partner Benz, DCX ended up with 16,217 beating Toyota by only 207 units. Including Volvo and Land Rover sales into Fords number bumps then up to second spot with a total of 16,678 vehicles sold.  GM was the head of the pack for the month with 26,793 units being sold. 

Underlined are the Highest and Lowest gains/losses in percentage and units.

Diluting the brand

The rather vague official definition of Chrysler’s niche - “usable technology instead of technology for its own sake” - led me to wonder what’s driving the brand managers over there. Dodge is big and bold, apparently in styling if in no other way, except for the minivans; and there’s Jeep.

Diluting the brand is one of the biggest causes of failure in automotive history as far as I can tell. Packard died when they reached down; Mercedes lost some credibility with the A Class and 190, and Dieter Zetsche himself is saying they’re going to stop it with the “not Mercedes like” sports cars; Chrysler lost its cachet when it started rebadging Plymouths; Dodge lost its own cachet for the same reason, 30-40 years ago; and Plymouth itself ended up dead when it had nothing unique to offer, which hardly helped a company whose sales were only recently mainly Plymouths.

There’s Nash/Hudson/AMC chasing the sales until there was nothing left to define the brand; Cadillac famously destroying itself overnight with the Cavalier; and Lincoln’s own version, the Taurus Continental. Now Caddy is building itself back up by becoming BMW… and of course BMW realized it had to endure some pain to become the Ultimate Driving Machine, including killing the popular 318 and NOT going into standard performance minivans or SUVs (instead making its performance-enhanced minivan/SUV).

BMW seems to be the only brand that really holds to an image tightly. Everyone else seems to chase the quick buck and the easy sales. Lexus is hardly immune; if they make an SUV that’s obviously different in driving experience from the Toyota version, I haven’t driven it yet. Likewise the IS. And then there’s the Matrix! Totally not Toyota in feel.

One could go on for a quite a while looking at automotive mistakes. You could even say that Plymouth’s competition in racing with Dodge really hurt the brand’s roots… and Mercury died chasing the quick sales of the Tracer. When you can get an Escort with a Mercury badge, nobody will buy a Merc for the prestige. There just isn’t any.

If people really know what you are and what you represent, you might not get all the buyers all the time, but at least you don’t have to do massive incentives because suddenly you’re fighting for attention among all the other formless entities.