People don’t want to buy Jeeps. That is one likely takeaway from a Wall Street Journal article on car companies with too much inventory. Jeep is near the top of that list at 102 days of inventory. Buick and Jaguar, two moribund brands, are barely worse off. The industry average is 60 days. (These are the most dangerous cars on the road today.)
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Part of the problem is that Jeep sales have been horrible this year. Through the first quarter, they were down 20% to 154,203. Not a single model had an increase in sales. Sales of the top-selling Grand Cherokee (inappropriately named after an Indian nation) cratered 27% to 54,502.
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Quality is also a problem. Consumer Reports recently trashed two models, as the Wrangler and Gladiator were both on the magazine’s “10 Least Reliable Cars” list. Whether or not every model is on the list, the overall effect harms the brand. Jeep has made a stab at improving quality, but the results are not evident yet.
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Jeep also has a small army of competitors. This certainly includes models from Honda, Toyota, Ford and Chevy. Each is manufactured by a car company with an impressive dealer network, product development, marketing and manufacturing expertise.
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Jeep is famous as the first four-wheel drive vehicle. However, after eight decades, its best years may be behind it. Parent Stellantis North America will wring out what profits it can, but Jeep is not a major priority.
Jeep’s Deep Problem
© Courtesy of Jeep
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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