Jeep’s parent company has ignored objections by the Cherokee Nation that it should not use the Cherokee name on some of its products. Two years ago, Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, told Car & Driver that he wanted the name of his tribe off the Jeep Cherokee and Grand Cherokee models. (These are the worst new cars for the environment and humans.)
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Jeep’s owner Stellantis has done nothing because its management understands that renaming a major product would hurt sales. That is hardly an excuse, ethically. It calls into question management morals.
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Several other organizations that use Indian names have made changes, either because of public pressure or ethical decisions by management. One of the most prominent was replacing the name of the Washington NFL team, the Redskins. The team’s new name is the Washington Commanders.
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Ultimately, the decision about the Jeep name rests with Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares. He has reason not to drop the Cherokee name. Jeep sales fell 20% in the first quarter to 154,203. According to Cox Automotive, “The volume-leading Grand Cherokee had a sales decline of 27% to 54,502 units.”
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Cherokee sales are off, which is a kind of justice.
Jeep’s Indian Race Problem
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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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