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Cars and Drivers

In Chrysler’s Strong Quarter, a Hedge for Fiat

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Little did sweater-clad Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne know when he bought a controlling stake in troubled number three U.S. car maker Chrysler that he was hedging an unknown bet that Fiat would fall into disrepair under the weight of a terrible European car market. Now, Marchionne appears to be a genius. Chrysler does not act like a third-tier car company. It has outpaced rivals General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) and Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) in terms of growth rates in the U.S. market most months.

Chrysler pulled out another improved month again in October.

Chrysler Group reported U.S. sales of 126,185 units, a 10% increase compared with sales in October 2011 (114,512 units), and the group’s best October sales since 2007.

The Chrysler, Dodge, Ram Truck and Fiat brands each posted year-over-year sales gains in October compared with the same month a year ago. The Fiat brand’s 89% increase was the largest sales gain of any Chrysler Group brand for the month. October marked Chrysler Group’s 31st-consecutive month of year-over-year sales gains. The Fiat bragging meant little. Sales of the brand were a pathetic 3,720.

One unit of Chrysler did extraordinarily well. Dodge sales rose 20% during the month to 40,611. This masked to some extent Jeep sales that fell 5% to 34,023, and Chrysler brand sales, which were up only 5% to 22,222.

Now, all Marchionne can hope is the American car and light truck sales remain strong.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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