fleet sales
Chrysler has gone from being America’s “fleet queen,” unable to sell enough of its product to retailers and relying on corporate and government sales to make up the balance, to being almost Japanese in its sales to retail buyers.

According to Automotive News, GM and Ford ran neck-and-neck with 23% and 24% of their sales to fleet buyers in July, while Chrysler sold 89% of their vehicles to retail buyers and just 11% to fleets. Nissan and Hyundai both sold a higher proportion to fleets, at 15% and 14%, respectively.

Toyota and Honda, the #1 and #5 retail automakers, sold just 6% and 2% of their cars to fleets, respectively.

While some fleet sales are desirable (e.g. to the police or to large ranches), others are not — particularly breakeven-or-worse sales to rental fleets.

Chrysler is currently the #4  retail automaker, after losing to Honda and Nissan at times over the past few years, with around 149,300 vehicles sold to retail customers in July; the company sits between Ford and Honda (162,000 and 133,200). Toyota edged out GM for the top spot by just about 5,700 vehicles.

In fleet, Chrysler is still #3, but it sits just 300 sales above Nissan. GM and Ford are #1 and #2, with over 50,000 fleet sales each, and nearly 9,000 vehicles separating GM from Ford.