FCA’s Light Truck Sales Reach New Heights

FCA’s light-truck sales continued to expand in the first half of 2016, with fully 83% of the Italian-American automaker’s 1.14 million sales through June coming from trucks and utilities, WardsAuto data shows.

Car sales totaled 196,623 units through June, down 32.5% from 291,259 a year ago, while light trucks accounted for 947,269 sales, up 20.8% from a year-ago total of 784,029. Overall, FCA is up 6.4% so far this year, including a 2.3% daily sales rate increase in June. There were 26 selling days in June compared with 24 in May.

Big winners for the month on a DSR basis were the aging Jeep Compass (+119%) and Dodge Journey (+33%) and the new Jeep Renegade (+92%). The Jeep Patriot added 19.6% while the Grand Cherokee grew 4.5% and the Wrangler ticked up less than 1%.

The outgoing Dodge Caravan continues to post big numbers, nearly doubling sales to 71,523 through June, while the all-new Chrysler Pacifica ramped up to 10,189 sales so far, including 7,207 sales in June. The Town & Country minivan, which Pacifica replaces, logged 55,448 sales year-to-date and 6,054 for the month.

Ram brand sales totaled 248,605 for the first six months, up 11%, with Ram pickup sales accounting for 223,038 of those units. Pickup volume was up 8.3% compared with like-2015, including a 9.4% DSR gain in June.

Dodge posted a 0.8% DSR increase in June while overall volume for the year was up 5.7%, despite a 20,000-unit drop in sales of the Dart small car. Jeep showed a solid 16.5% overall gain through June, including a 12.5% bump in DSR for the month.

The Chrysler brand recorded a 19.3% decline for the first six months, with a massive 66,000-unit drop for the 200 small car.

Fiat’s bright spot was the 500X CUV with a whopping 243% leap in DSR in June to 1,156 units and 7,664 sales year-to-date. Overall, the Fiat brand was down 22% for the month and 18.6% for the year.

“Strong Jeep and Ram Truck brand sales fueled our best June sales in 11 years,” says Reid Bigland, senior vice president-sales, FCA-North America. “In spite of some severe stock market volatility in June, the American consumer stayed focus on buying new vehicles and propelled FCA to six vehicle sales records last month.”

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