[Allpar News System]

This morning, Chrysler Group reported January U.S. light vehicle sales of 117,731 units, 16% ahead of January 2012. The figures were the company’s best January results since 2008 and the 34th consecutive month of year-over-year improvement. “It’s been a good week for the Chrysler Group. On Wednesday we announced full year 2012 profits of $1.7 billion and followed that today with our January sales, up 16 percent, marking our 34th-consecutive month of year-over-year sales growth,” said Reid Bigland, Head of U.S. Sales. “Entering 2013 our product portfolio has never been stronger with our new Ram truck picking up both the 2013 Motor Trend and the North American ‘Truck of the Year’ awards, and the introduction of our new 30 mpg highway Jeep® Grand Cherokee equipped with our new EcoDiesel engine.” The Chrysler, Dodge, Ram Truck and Fiat brands each beat their 2012 results with Dodge's 37.4% advance leading the..

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[SouthPawXJ]

It is great to see Dart sales continue to improve. Does anyone know what happened to the Grand Caravan between this year and last? That seems like serious drop off in demand. Did the Grand Caravan and Journey numbers get flipped somehow?

 

[JRS200x]

Oddly bad month for Caravan... Not sure what is going on there to be honest, especially in light of the Town & Country sales improving.

 

[TripleT]

perhaps fleet sales are down for the Caravan

 

[JRS200x]

Sales are down by 40%, I hope fleet sales of the Caravan aren't making up that much of volume, or it may be the Caravan that gets dropped.

 

[SouthPawXJ]

I'm suspicious of these numbers. For the Journey to do 94% better seems out of place, considering the sales number is slightly better than the Grand Caravan's Jan 2012 numbers. That is not to say it couldn't do better... I just don't think it would suddenly take off like that in sales.

EDIT - I'm not implying malice with the suspiciousness. An accidental mistake is what I was thinking, not something malicious on the part of Chrysler, Fiat, or anyone else.

 

[bumonbox]

I'm suspicious of these numbers. For the Journey to do 94% better seems out of place, considering the sales number is slightly better than the Grand Caravan's Jan 2012 numbers. That is not to say it couldn't do better... I just don't think it would suddenly take off like that in sales.

I'd be curious to know if something is at work here. I am not questioning the accuracy of the numbers, so much as if some practice has been changed.
Clearly, Jan is just a bad month for the year anyways. But it's the drop against last year when Jan was already bad.

The T&C did rise. So I too wonder what is up. I do not the GC has a ton of fleet sales, maybe they made some change that killed the fleet sales. Next month will be more clear.
As for the dart, good it's on the rise. The arrival of additional product, and the revised pricing for packaging will undoubtedly help.

 

[mark...hp48]

Just a particular viewpoint here; I see the sales' consecutive months of gains going to ~40(perhaps near Infinity :cop: ) & the Dart steadily improving to 8-10k/month by March/April.

 

[FreeLantz]

I'm suspicious of these numbers. For the Journey to do 94% better seems out of place, considering the sales number is slightly better than the Grand Caravan's Jan 2012 numbers. That is not to say it couldn't do better... I just don't think it would suddenly take off like that in sales.

EDIT - I'm not implying malice with the suspiciousness. An accidental mistake is what I was thinking, not something malicious on the part of Chrysler, Fiat, or anyone else.

It's not really what I'd call malicious, but perhaps manipulative. If you have already decided the next minivan is going to be a Chrysler only, you can push that model harder to the fleets and to the public alike, with more advertising or even better incentives, and thereby shift sales from Caravan to T&C. It will be easier to justify killing the Caravan if it has a slow year in sales for 2013 and T&C has an up year. (ALL of this is purely speculative!)

As for Journey, I think there were some heavy incentives on 2012's that blew out a lot of stagnant inventory.

Question regarding Dart:

We used to hear about the "magic number" for the triplets that had to be sold consistently for them to be profitable, or at least to meet the company's expectations. What is that magic number for Dart in terms of monthly sales? 10k? 12k? Just curious.

 

[vipermoon64]

You had some mistakes in the news post, at least twice you said "compared to [Jan 2011] instead of 2012.

Oh and I SERIOUSLY think the DGC and Journey sales got mismatched

 

[awolb69]

I see that the Avenger is the best selling Dodge brand vehicle for the month and also the 3rd best selling Chrysler product for the same period. But it appears that 2013 will be the last year for the Avenger with no replacement in the product plan. I know alot of these go into rental fleets, but within 6-8 months most of those cars end up on Chrysler dealers used car lots where they are sold at a nice profit. I just bought one of these last week, a SXT Plus V6 and I think its an awsome distinctly styled american car. Chrysler needs to recognize the huge main stream midsize segment and needs to have a Dodge branded vehicle to compete with the Fusion/Malibu/Camry/Altima.

 

[GasAxe]

Glad to see the Ram sales continuing to rise. It is too great of a truck for people to miss.

 

[bumonbox]

You had some mistakes in the news post, at least twice you said "compared to [Jan 2011] instead of 2012.

Oh and I SERIOUSLY think the DGC and Journey sales got mismatched

You know, yeah, initially I didn't think they'd make a clerical error, however if you look at the trend on the entire list, all non discontinued vehicles saw increases (save the GC). Most of them were moderate though. The exception being the Journey and Caravan. I mean I get sales, but Doubling your sales with out any changes I find hard to believe. On the same token, losing half your sales when the vehicle had been trending upward in previous months, I also find hard to believe. If you flip them, then both vehicles would see moderate increases over previous year, in line with their trends from preceding months, and in line with the sales trends on that list. I wonder if anyone can validate it

 

[unverferth]

I see that the Avenger is the best selling Dodge brand vehicle for the month and also the 3rd best selling Chrysler product for the same period. But it appears that 2013 will be the last year for the Avenger with no replacement in the product plan. I know alot of these go into rental fleets, but within 6-8 months most of those cars end up on Chrysler dealers used car lots where they are sold at a nice profit. I just bought one of these last week, a SXT Plus V6 and I think its an awsome distinctly styled american car. Chrysler needs to recognize the huge main stream midsize segment and needs to have a Dodge branded vehicle to compete with the Fusion/Malibu/Camry/Altima.

Totally agree.
My daughter just got an Avenger and it is a terrific car. And it doesn't look like every other car out there. Very distinctive and very American.
And now it's going away ?......go figure.

 

[Dave Z]

My thought on Journey vs Caravan:

If Chrysler Fleet decided to drop fleet-discounting on Caravan, but to increase it on Journey, your numbers would be explained. For fleet use, I suspect Journey would be interchangeable with Caravan in many cases. It has a much smaller interior, but depending on what use it's put to, it might be just fine. In real life I'd expect Journey gets slightly higher gas mileage though EPA estimates are identical (because Journey's a lot lighter and I think EPA city cycle is not as stop-and-go as it oughter be.)

Journey has optional AWD, I might add.

 

[Ricardo]

Yahoo story plus responses if anyone cares:

http://news.yahoo.com/chrysler-sales-16-percent-january-130414106--finance.html

 

[Stratuscaster]

 

[red-jk]

With the Avenger doing well and the Dart making progress it makes me wonder if Dodge could be a much bigger player with a full lineup in B, C, D and E segments. I really think Dodge needs to go head to head with Chevy, Ford, Nissan, Toyota and Honda. I don’t understand why they are cutting the lineup back when I think they should be expanding the lineup and being much more aggressive.

I still don’t understand why they want all 4 Chrysler brands under one roof. I would think they could do much better with Chrysler/Jeep, Dodge/Ram, Fiat/Alfa Romeo and Maserati/ Ferrari under their own roofs. I just don’t understand the branding/market strategy they are following. Can someone explain to me what Chrysler/Fiats marketing/brand strategy is moving forward?

 

[Mr.Source]

Nothing wrong happening with the Caravan,its an inventory issue,if you look at past months,the Caravan has been selling very well more than the Town, so now dealers arent having enough Caravans to sell,so they sell what they have in stock.
Same is happening with the 200 dealer are full with 200 so sales of those are very good,just look at inventories of the 300 Charger,Challenger vs the 200 its ridiculous, with some dealers you can say its a 200 dealer,because their stock of other products its very low,thats Chryslers fault, dealers should buy to Chrysler decent mixtures of their products and not buy many of a particular one and almost noneof a certain vehicle, like they are doing with the Durango,yes my friends the lack of sales of the Durango is because of the dealers they are the ones who can kill a product,
In meetings where many of us were invited, we could easly see,how many dealers are very easly influenced to order or not certain vehicles, but where is Chrysler?????

 

[Cdnautowrkr444]

Lack of inventory might explain it. Windsor assembly was down from Dec 22nd till Jan 22nd