Chrysler Is A Dead Brand Walking

The whole company now referred to as Stellantis was once called Chrysler, and yet Chrysler is the most ignored and, frankly, saddest of all the carmaker’s many brands. Technically, there’s even a new model this year, though the combination of the new model and the existing old one have somehow resulted in declining sales. It’s grim.

This will not be the first Morning Dump where I opine about the state of Chrysler, but there’s a new CEO, and he may have missed all of my previous musings on the subject. I’m here to help, because that’s just the kind of good guy I am. I’ll start with Chrysler’s failure and then, just to make it fair, I’ll talk about a few more failures. Like Tesla in recent days! The company had another mediocre quarter from a sales perspective, and I’m curious to see just how bad Cybertruck sales are going to end up this year. It could be worse, Tesla could be… Rivian.

As a whole, the industry has failed to deliver enough affordable vehicles in that sweet spot from about $25-$35k. There’s some data about how to build cars for that market that’s worth diving into, so dive I shall.

What Would You Say You Do Here, Chrysler?

The Chrysler/Cerberus/Daimler/Renault/AMC/Fiat/Chips Ahoy!/Stellantis company has gone through, oh, 47 different “resurgences” and 22 different names in the last 100 years. During most of those resurrections, there was at least one Chrysler vehicle around to help keep the brand alive. Lee Iacocca saved the company with the minivan, for which we got the Chrysler Town & Country. He did so again with the K-Car, for which we got the Chrysler LeBaron and New Yorker. You can play this game all day long. Even the PT Cruiser became the Chrysler PT Cruiser. The Chrysler vehicles might not have been the first, or most popular versions of any savior platform, but there was always something to justify the brand’s existence.

In the company’s big Obama-era turnaround, the world was treated to the Ralph Gilles-designed Chrysler 300. That’s still a car that looks excellent and feels like a brand with swagger. What does Chrysler have now? The Chrysler Pacifica minivan. And I’m not here to diss the Pacifica. I truly adore the Pacifica. It’s a great minivan, if not a slightly old one at this point. But a Swagger-mobile worthy of Walter P. Chrysler? I’m not so sure.

Last year, Chrysler added the “budget” Voyager, which is just a Pacifica in a different trim. That’s it!

Chrysler stands for luxury, abundance, and a country that won two hot wars and a cold one. It says you’re successful. It says you’ve made it. Or, at the very least, it says your credit is good enough to get a Dodge with a little more chrome on it. The American Dream, my friends.

If you want to know how bad Chrysler is doing, you can just look at this quarter’s sales results, which are dismal. Here are the brands:

• Jeep +1%
• Ram +5%
• Chrysler – 42%
• Dodge – 48%
• Fiat +25%
• Alfa Romeo -51%

It’s not like any of these brands are exactly thriving, and both Dodge and Alfa Romeo are doing worse, I suppose. Fiat has one product that’s selling miserably, but it’s an improvement over when the brand was barely able to sell double digits each month, and at least it has a new product. Here’s a quote from an analyst in the Free Press that sums it up quite well:

Ivan Drury, the director of insights at Edmunds, told the Free Press he was surprised by Stellantis’ report.

He thought it would be worse.

“While not over the top surprising, I’d say it’s slightly better than I expected. It’s not like they really blew it out of the water, right?” Drury said. “I expected them to be down 12%, and they say they’re down 10%.”

Yikes. Somehow, Voyager + Pacifica doesn’t = more sales.

This is the fault of the previous administration under Carlos Tavares, which pissed away most of the goodwill the brand had. Now there’s a new guy, CEO Antonio Filosa, and I genuinely wish him well. I think he’s already starting to make some wise moves, and the return of SRT today is already a great sign.

I think Chrysler got shortchanged under Tavares because there was a sense that the brand would get some sort of electric crossover, and we’d all be crowing about the Airflow. That didn’t happen, and doesn’t make sense now. I like the Bishop’s idea about bringing back The Imperial, but literally anything that’s not a rebadged Alfa is great at this point.

• Make a Chrysler version of the Wagoneer to compete with the Escalade?
• Make a Chrysler version of the Charger with a V8 and call it a 300?
• Make a Chrysler version of the new Jeep Cherokee and call it the… Conquest, IDK?

Without any new products, there’s no reason for Chrysler to exist. Here’s hoping the brand can figure it out, as losing Chrysler would suck.

The Tesla Cybertruck Is Going Off The Deep End

Tesla’s Q2 deliveries were out, and the expectation was that sales would be around 387,000 for the quarter. The actual number is 384,122. Not great, not terrible, and about 13% off of Q2 2024.

Here’s what stuck out to me, though:

You’re telling me that the Model S, X, and Cybertruck only added up to 10,394 total deliveries? That’s down half from Q2 last year. It’ll take until we get registration data in a few weeks to know just how poorly the Cybertruck is doing, but this number is down from last quarter as well. That’s bad.

Not To Jump To Any Conclusions… But Rivian’s Going To Have A Tough Year

The Rivian R1S and R1T are both good products, built by a smart company. It’s also an expensive vehicle in a surprisingly crowded market for electric trucks and SUVs, with only so many buyers.

Here’s how the company describes its second quarter:

Rivian Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: RIVN) today announced production and delivery totals for the quarter ending June 30, 2025. The company produced 5,979 vehicles at its manufacturing facility in Normal, Illinois and delivered 10,661 vehicles during the same period. Production was limited during the second quarter in preparation for model year 2026 vehicles expected to launch later this month.

Production and delivery results for the quarter are in line with Rivian’s outlook. Rivian is also reaffirming its 2025 delivery guidance range of 40,000 to 46,000 vehicles.

This adds up to barely over 20,000 cars so far this year in a market that’s likely going to get slower in the second half. Not great.

People Who Don’t Have A Million Dollars Still Want Nice Cars

Research and data firm AutoPacific put together a big report on vehicle affordability, and the big focus is on demand among buyers in that sweet spot of $25-$35k, where vehicles like the Nissan Sentra and Chevy Trax play. This is the part of the market that automakers don’t seem to be serving as well as they used to, but where there’s likely to be a lot of growth.

Per AutoPacific data, many shoppers in the $25k-$35k price bracket are more open to sedans due to their greater affordability (though they’re still more likely to want an SUV), and they’re more likely to want a tried-and-true gasoline engine. Note that while 88% of these new vehicle intenders currently own an internal combustion engined vehicle, 20% want their new $25k-$35k vehicle to be hybridized, and only about 5% want it to be fully electric. For more than a third of these buyers (35%), this will be the first time they have ever purchased or leased a new vehicle, upgrading from their current vehicle that’s, on average, more than 11 years old. On the outside, their ideal $25k-$35k vehicle doesn’t have flashy exterior enhancements like LED welcome lighting, illuminated brand logos, or an expansive glass roof.

On the inside, the cabin is likely upholstered in cloth, with manual adjustment for the seats, a cabin layout that prioritizes practicality over design with more buttons and rotary dial controls, and an analog gauge cluster next to a modestly-sized center touchscreen that doesn’t have embedded factory navigation. Despite a more restricted budget, buyers of this $25k-$35k vehicle still want several of the popular features and technology found on higher-priced vehicles including wireless charging pads for smartphones, heated and ventilated front seats, a common 110v outlet, driver profile settings, and active safety features like rear cross-traffic alert with automatic emergency braking, rearward automatic emergency braking, lane change assist, and rain-sensing windshield wipers. Features like a head-up display or upgraded branded stereos (Bose, Harman Kardon, etc.) aren’t necessary, nor are immersive connected services that require an additional paid data plan to use.

They just want nice things and not to have to pay a subscription to use their own car. Is that so hard?

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

It’s Houston’s very own Geto Boys with “Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta.” Maybe do not play this song loudly anywhere outside of your car, but please enjoy Bushwick Bill robbing a drug deal that involves… is that a guy in a Mazda MX-3? Perfect. [Ed Note: I’m a G Code guy. -DT]. 

The Big Question

How would you save Chrysler?

Lead photo: Office Space/Stellantis