Cars and Drivers

More Evidence Fiat Cannot Sell Cars in America

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: March 23, 2016 6:51 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 11:37 am

Fresh off beatings in new Consumer Reports and J.D. Power ratings of Fiat cars, data on sales show how high the hurdle is for the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (NYSE: FCAU) brand, that it is nothing better than a failure among the manufacturer’s better performing products.

The Fiat 500L received the worst score given out by the Consumer Reports annual evaluation of brands and models. And Fiat received the third worst score in the J.D. Power 2016 Customer Service Index Study. It is generally accepted that low scores in these studies hurt sales.

The hard fact is that Fiat had trouble selling cars before either study came out. According to Edmunds, Fiat had the longest “days to turn” of any brand sold in the United States. The car research firm defines days to turn as “the average number of days vehicles were in dealer inventory before being sold during the months indicated.”

In February, the average days to turn across the industry was 70. Fiat’s figure was 141, which was 45% higher than in February 2015. Over the period, Fiat has only been below 100 days to turn during three months. (At the other end of the spectrum, Subaru had the lowest days to turn at 40 during February.)

U.S. Fiat sales have fallen 15% to 5,587 for the first two months of the year.