Fiat Sales Fall Only 42%

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 2:53AM EST · Published Mar 1, 10:05AM EST

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Fiat, the faltering Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (NYSE: FCAU) brand, suffered a U.S. sales drop of 42% in February. The brand sold only 1,241 units during the month. The performance was better than the year to date. For the first two months, sales were down 43% to 4,270.

It is a wonder Fiat Chrysler continues to support the Fiat brand in the United States.

Fiat suffers from two problems. One, which might be reversible eventually, is a horrible reputation for quality. Fiat ranked last among 34th among car brands sold in the United States in the most recent Consumer Reports car brand evaluation. This put it in last place. The methodology:

Our brand rankings by Overall Score are based on CR’s exhaustive vehicle testing, as well as owner feedback on more than 640,000 cars to determine the predicted reliability and owner satisfaction ratings.

Brands are ranked based on the average Overall Score for all of their current tested models. The Overall Score is a composite of the road-test score and the predicted reliability and owner satisfaction ratings from our Annual Auto Survey.

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In the new J.D. Power 2018 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study, Fiat ranked third from the bottom among 31 brands. The methodology:

The 2018 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study is based on responses from 36,896 original owners of 2015 model-year vehicles after three years of ownership. The study was fielded in October-December 2017.

The problem Fiat cannot affect is the level of crowding in the low price, high gas mileage segment of the car industry in the United States.

For the time being, based on its model lineup and quality problems, there is no reason to think that Fiat’s prospects will improve this year.

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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.