Chrysler European Sales Good, Should Get Better

Cars and Drivers

Published: October 18, 2014 9:05 am

Last Updated: April 27, 2020 7:00 pm

For the month of September, what is now Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (NYSE: FCAU) sold a total of 67,743 vehicles in the European Union (EU) nations, up 6.1% compared with September of 2013. For the year-to-date through September, FCA’s sales rose 2.7% to 576,263 units.

The interesting thing is not how many cars the company sold, but which brands. Cars wearing the Fiat badge posted 52,000 of the company’s EU sales, up 4.4% compared with September 2013. Of the cars sold year-to-date, 448,000 have been Fiat-badged cars.

Lancia/Chrysler, the company’s European brand, got a bump of 13.6% in September, selling about 6,700 units, and the Alfa Romeo brand experienced a sales dip of 13.6% to 5,000 units.

The big news for FCA is in its Jeep brand. Sales rose 62% in the EU in September to a modest total of 3,414 units. Year to date, Jeep sales are up 47% to more than 23,000 units in the 28 EU countries and the three countries in the European Free Trade Area (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland). The Jeep brand posted a September year-over-year increase of around 45% in Italy, 49% in Germany, 27% in France, 134% in the United Kingdom and 32% in Spain.

For the year to date, Jeep brand sales in the EU and EFTA nations are up 47% to more than 25,000 units. And that has been accomplished without sales of Jeep’s hottest selling vehicle, the all-new Jeep Cherokee.

Jeep Grand Cherokee sales are up 44% year-to-date and Jeep Wrangler sales were up 23% in September. But the new Cherokee and the new Renegade were just recently launched in Europe. FCA expects sales to rise even more as a result of the new models.

Finally, what’s happening with Ferrari and Maserati, FCA’s two luxury brands? Sales totaled 654 in September and have reached 6,633 for the first nine months of the year. That’s a jump of 138% for the month and nearly 105% for the year to date.

Shares of FCA closed up more than 4% on Friday at $9.10 in a post-IPO range of $7.20 to $12.35. The company also announced a recall of some 900,000 vehicles late Thursday.

ALSO READ: GM’s Europe Sales Continue to Drop

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