M/T: The state of FCA

[kevm14]

https://www.motortrend.com/news/state-o ... 4DFAD81E16

So despite some sales success with the muscle car approach, I think it is pretty obvious that this is not a model worth copying. The article states that the Dodge brand has 3% market share.

And if you just skim it seems like they are succeeding.

The last decade has seen a 60 percent increase in Challenger and Charger sales, and the Challenger had its best sales in 2018. And although these cars ride on an old platform, there are no plans to give them new bones or to discontinue them as long as there's demand and they meet all regulations.

But when you look closer...

http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/u-s-auto-s ... -by-brand/

228k sales year to date for Dodge and down 9% from this time last year. Chevrolet (#3 brand) did nearly 939k sales and down 6.4%. Ford was the #1 selling brand at 1.17M sales, down 4.5%. On average all brands are down 2.5% YTD.

When you look at the article everything they are doing, at least on the Dodge side (they are all bad, really), it seems to be something a failing company would be doing. Eh, just keep making the same thing with some variations until people stop buying them, then we'll.....figure something out. Yeah. Good luck with that. This is why Chevrolet and Ford are "lame" because they are trying to stay in business!! Good time to be a muscle car enthusiast but you are not going to get anywhere begging other brands to compete unfortunately. We may have passed peak muscle car, and when you look at the Challenger, Mustang and Camaro, they are pretty perfected and pure versions of themselves. Only place to go from here is down. That is my analysis.

[bill25]

I think this is an interesting time right now. Sure it could be the peak for muscle cars, but there is a lot going on.

Dodge could probably keep making the Challenger with minor updates for a long time and honestly, that would probably be fine as there are obviously plenty of people that think the performance is plenty for the street, and like the look, etc. Plus they get the fleet charger sales on the same platform. That's all fine to me. I think the issue is they literally don't have anything else. But they do. They have done a good marketing job of pretending that Jeep and Ram are different companies. If you look at it like that, they have set it up so that their companies don't compete with each other. You could say well, where are their crossovers, Jeep covers that. Trucks, Ram, Minivan - Chrysler. So for Ford, they are all fords, and if you want a nice version, it is a Lincoln. For FCA, they are just split into different companies. It is an interesting marketing concept.

I do see the point of "well all the cars are aged and there is no car variety". I think GM and Ford are on the way to not having a variety of cars also though. Ford said they are only going to have the Mustang and a Focus Crossover for cars, and GM seems to be moving in somewhat of that direction. Seems like the consumer focus is Crossovers and Trucks, and FCA is meeting that with Jeep and Ram. I would think that more and newer car platforms would be required, but the consumer demand is not really driving that I guess.

[kevm14]

I think the part about "meeting all regulations" is going to see the LX cars go away if there is no plan to update them.

And GM is doing something not that dissimilar with the Camaro, according to what we discussed recently. It WOULD be a shame if the Mustang was left. And the funny thing about the Mustang is it seems to have the most global appeal of the trio, FWIW. So I could see it sticking around the longest if only because of that. But with an aging (if temporarily popular) Challenger and a Camaro about to go away in a few years, I don't think that will lead to anything good on the Mustang, so that's obviously bad for enthusiasts of any of these. But the brutal truth is, these are all very low volume compared to what they used to be. I think in the future we'll remember the 2010s fairly fondly when it comes to muscle cars and HP/performance in general. And that was built upon the successes of the 2000s. Which was built upon the 90s....but I digress.