FCA Declines, but Ram Rides High

FCA US recorded a 1.3% decline in sales in September to 191,210 units with all but the company’s Ram truck brand posting drops for the month, WardsAuto data shows.

The Ram brand jumped 27.2% on a daily sales basis, notching 50,193 sales for the month and pushing its year-to-date volume to 385,850 units, an 11.1% increase. Ram’s strength offset declines by Fiat (-29.9%), Chrysler (-27.1%), Alfa Romeo (-25.5%) and Dodge (-6.5%). Even the reliably strong Jeep brand was off 2.6% for the month on sales of 76,331 units.

September 2016 and September 2015 each had 25 selling days.

Overall, FCA’s car business continued to shrink, posting a 24.3% drop in September, compounding a 31.9% decline year-to-date in non-truck business to 274,173 units.

The Italian-American automaker is eliminating the Chrysler 200 and Dodge Dart from its portfolio; year-to-date sales of those two models are off 64.6% and 45.6%, respectively. Dodge Challenger and Charger helped mitigate the car-side decline, recording increases of 19.5% and 31.5%, respectively.

On the light-truck side, a 4.4% increase for the month to 162,060 units is helping FCA realize a 15.2% gain in truck sales so far this year to 1.4 million vehicles. The Ram pickup accounted for 46,119 sales in September, up 29.2%, while the ProMaster commercial van chalked up 3,218 deliveries, a 14.2% increase.

Drops in sales of Jeep Cherokee (-12%), Compass (-15.6%), Wrangler (-18.5%) and Renegade (-12.8%) were offset by gains by Grand Cherokee (+18.2%) and Patriot (+32.7%).

Chrysler reported a 23% gain for its Pacifica minivan which tallied 9,172 sales for the month, pushing sales of the all-new minivan to 35,373 since it went on sale in April. Fiat enjoyed a small bump from the Mazda MX-5-based 124 Spider roadster with 490 sales in September.

[email protected] @bobgritzinger