Jeep’s Image Flattened

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Jeep’s Image Flattened

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Jeep has struggled in several recent surveys of car quality. Most recently, Hot Cars named it America’s least reliable brand. A recent story by editors of Insider showed how severe Jeep’s sales have been recently in an article titled: “What Happened to Jeep? The mother of all SUVs has lost its edge as sales fall and cars pile up on dealer lots.” (These are the bestselling cars in America.)
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The Hot Cars analysis showed that, based on a numerical measure, Jeep scored 30 out of a possible score of 100. This tied it with Land Rover Range Rover, which also does poorly in many car quality studies.
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Hot Cars’ editors singled out among the brand’s best-selling models. They wrote, “The Gladiator and Wrangler’s unreliability is infamous now due to the issues in suspension, body integrity, and the drive system rendering them impractical.” The market is full of SUVs and crossover alternatives. Jeep cannot afford to be seen as a broken brand.
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Jeep has had a huge lead in the SUV race. It was launched in 1943 and was famous for its wide use by the U.S. military in World War II. This image helped push sales for decades.
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A recent study of how long dealers have to hold cars, from when the manufacturer delivers them and when customers pick them up, showed the Jeep Cherokee at the wrong end of the list. According to a 24/7 Wall St. article: “The model with the highest days on market is the Jeep Cherokee. Its figure is 128.7 days.” No dealer wants to face that problem.

Jeep’s best days are behind it. It is doubtful its brand can be fully revived. Its eight-decade reputation has taken too much of a beating.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

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