{"id":21530,"date":"2017-12-12T10:07:21","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T14:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=21530"},"modified":"2017-12-12T10:07:21","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T14:07:21","slug":"new-world-order-jeep-is-a-sales-titan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2017\/12\/new-world-order-jeep-is-a-sales-titan","title":{"rendered":"New world order: Jeep is a sales titan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Tucson, Arizona \u2014\u00a0<\/em>Maybe the corporate name for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles should be Jeep Ram Automobiles.<\/p>\n

The SUV revolution has utterly upended the Fiat Chrysler establishment. Once a niche four-wheeler brand, Jeep has ridden the ute wave to become Fiat Chrysler\u2019s dominant big-volume brand. Chrysler, along with its sister-nameplate Dodge, and Fiat \u2014 mainstream brands that built their reputations on sedans \u2014 almost have become footnotes in company sales.<\/p>\n

Combined with Ram, which has surged to a 21 percent share of America\u2019s perennially strong pickup market, Jeep is the Auburn Hills-based automaker\u2019s foundation stone. Like GMC and Buick at crosstown rival General Motors, Jeep is emerging as the SUV heavyweight in a new American vehicle landscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were a niche brand just a few years ago,\u201d remembers veteran Jeep designer Mark Allen, who introduced an\u00a0all-new, more refined version of Jeep\u2019s iconic Wrangler off-road warrior<\/a>\u00a0to media here this week.<\/p>\n

Once known primarily for the World War II descendent Wrangler, Jeep has grown into a full-line ute-maker not unlike Dodge\u2019s car lineup at the turn of the 21st century. Jeep boasts subcompacts, compacts and midsize segment vehicles \u2014 except they are all SUVs, not sedans.<\/p>\n

The brand\u2019s growth in the last 25 years has been meteoric according to WardsAuto figures. In 1992 Jeep sold 268,724 cars in the U.S. In 2016 it sold 926,376. While not yet in the league of megabrands like Ford and Chevy which sell over 2 million vehicles a year, Jeep has big ambitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cCould Jeep be a megabrand? I think they know the sky is the limit,\u201d says Kelley Blue Book auto analyst Karl Brauer. \u201cThe world has rotated in their direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chrysler-Dodge sales, by contrast, have stagnated. Their numbers in 2016 (720,830) virtually are the same as in 1992 (710,707). Pickup-maker Ram, on the other hand, has nearly doubled its sales from 291,173 to 545,851 as its bold face and smooth-riding, coil-spring rear suspension \u2014 unique in the segment \u2014 has been embraced by buyers.<\/p>\n

Jeep took advantage of what in retrospect seems a natural birthright to all-wheel-drive ute dominance.<\/p>\n

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