Alfa Romeo, Ram Carry FCA in 2017

FCA US continued to shed fleet sales and overall volume in 2017 with daily light-vehicle sales declining 7.2% in December from like-2016, ending the year off 8.4% in total volume.

The Italian-American automaker posted 170,241 deliveries for the month, bringing its total for the year to 2,042,173, down from 2,228,578 in 2016.

On a daily-sales basis, Chrysler gained 6.5% compared with December 2016, while Alfa Romeo deliveries rose to 2,034 from just 52 sales year-ago. Fiat suffered the sharpest decline in December, off 30.7%, followed by Dodge (-20.3%), Jeep (-8.6%) and Ram (-2.9%). December had 26 selling days, one less than year-ago.

Ram and Alfa Romeo showed gains in total volume for the year, with Ram posting a 1.8% increase on 539,587 deliveries while Alfa Romeo saw sales climb from 516 units in 2016 to more than 12,000 in 2017. Fiat (-19.1%) and Chrysler (-18.7%) brands suffered the largest decline in annual volume, while Jeep was off 10.6%.

Overall, FCA light-truck deliveries dipped 5.9% for the year to 1.78 million while car sales plummeted 22.2% to 261,400 units as FCA continued to whittle away at fleet deliveries, an effort begun in 2016. The automaker pared fleet sales another 42% year-over-year in December, mostly through a 75% reduction in Jeep-brand fleet sales. The company reported fleet sales represented just 12% of its total December sales.

The Chrysler brand’s strong December came from increases in 300 sedan sales, up 65.9%, and the Pacifica minivan, up 12.5%. Pacifica deliveries nearly doubled in 2017 to 118,274. Dodge’s decline continued with soft sales across all nameplates except the soon-to-be-gone Caravan minivan.

Jeep’s dip in daily sales of Renegade (-35%) and Wrangler (-9.5%) was offset by gains by Cherokee (+22.7%), Compass (+14.1%) and Grand Cherokee (+5.5%). An all-new Wrangler and refreshed Cherokee should bolster the Jeep showroom this year.

For the Ram brand, deliveries of the ProMaster City small van, up 24.7% in December, cushioned a 25.8% collapse in ProMaster large-van sales and a 1.3% drop in Ram pickup deliveries. An all-new Ram arrives in the first quarter.

Fiat’s 500L (+13%) and the 124 Spider roadster (+19.2%) carried Fiat sales last month as the brand’s small 500 fell 50.9% and the 500X dropped 17.1%. Alfa Romeo continued to see small but incremental sales growth against virtually no volume year-ago.

[email protected] @bobgritzinger