Chrysler Sales Tumble 42 Percent In June

Chrysler Sales Tumble 42 Percent In June
http://tinyurl.com/mrbquq

But, like Ford, Chrysler is talking retail. As in Chrysler increased
“retail market share more than 1 percentage point compared with June
2008.” Actually retail sales declined 16 percent, and combined with a 95
percent drop in fleet sales (despite selling nearly 3k vehicles to the
feds in a single go), Chrysler’s overall sales are down 42 percent
compared to June 2008. When sales were off 36 percent year-on-year. Talk
about bad to worse.

The only good news? Chrysler has managed to control its inventories.
With only a 71-day supply of vehicles, ChryCo dealer lots are 56 percent
less crowded than they were a year ago. But that’s as good as it gets.

PT Cruiser and Sebring were down 82 and 66 percent respectively. Both
(theoretically) mass-market nameplates are currently selling under 2,000
units per month. In fact, Town & Country is the only Chrysler-badged
vehicle with sales over 2k units. Of course it’s slumping as well, down
27 percent at 7,187.

Jeep results are usually buoyed by the Wrangler, which had a better 2008
than just about any Chrysler model. But sunny days aren’t keeping the
Wrangler moving; its sales declined 28 percent to 4,810. Compass,
Patriot, Commander and Grand Cherokee all saw year-on-year drops in the
40-70 percent range, while the Liberty stayed relatively strong at 3,815
units sold.

Things are even worse for the Dodge brand. Take out the Challenger (+35
percent, 1,369 units), Ram (-10 percent) and Journey (-26 percent) and
there’s not a single nameplate that declined less than 42 percent.
Selling 369 Durangos a month is no way to emerge from bankruptcy. But
with several nameplates selling over 2,000 units per month, at least
Dodge is beating Chrysler’s eponymous badge.

 

Couple things to keep in mind:

1) We are at the end of a model year - buyers can wait a couple months and
get the
2010's. Why would they pay full price now for an '09? If they really want
an '09 they
cna wait a few months and buy them a lot cheaper

2) The cash-for-clunkers program has been advertised for a while but hasn't
started yet.
I think a lot of people are waiting for this

3) If Chrysler is maintaining the percentage chunk of pie that it had last
year, then that
is very good news since it indicates that once the pie starts expanding,
Chryslers chunk
will get bigger.

Bad news would really be if Chryslers share of the retail pie was dropping
relative to
the other brands, as that would men when the pie start growing, that their
share would
shrink even faster.

Ted

 

Anyone care to take a guess as to why the Challenger posted such a high
% change?

I'm thinking a good chunk of those sales were to people that thought
that this was going to be their last change to buy the Challenger. I
was even toying with the idea of buying one, in case it was not going to
be produced when Chrysler started making cars again (assuming they were
going to be making vehicles again after entering bankruptcy).

Detailed production / sales breakdown:

http://ca.sys-con.com/node/1022598

And here:

http://scoop.chrysler.com/2009/07/

 

Ahh! So *that's* what the big holdup in the market is - people waiting
for the model year changeover. Bwaaaahhhahh!