Home » Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram Dealers Say Their Brands Are A ‘Disaster’ And They Know Who To Blame

Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram Dealers Say Their Brands Are A ‘Disaster’ And They Know Who To Blame

Tmd Jeep Disaster
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It is getting messy in Auburn Hills, the corporate HQ of Stellantis North America. Real Housewives of Beverley Hills-level drama. On one side you’ve got the leadership of the Stellantis National Dealer Council (NDC), and on the other side, you’ve got Carlos Tavares being painted as the Lisa Rinna-type villain. It is naaaaaaasty.

The theme of today’s Morning Dump is: Friends and Enemies. We’re going to start with Carlos Tavares because, if you believe his dealers, he’s basically traded the company’s future for a short-term financial gain that has benefited him and no one else. Stellantis, as you might guess, disagrees.

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Nissan’s dealers are also unhappy with their leadership as the company looks to cut its way to success.

China, notably, has a lot of friends. It also, notably, has a lot of less-than-friends. The country’s automakers are looking to expand production overseas, in spite of a decent amount of domestic overcapacity, and a new report makes it sound like China’s leadership is winking and nodding as to where it might be smart, or not smart, to build new plants.

And, finally, GM and Hyundai embarked on a big friendship today in order to… do things. Many things. They don’t have a specific plan, but they at least have the concept of a plan.

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Stellantis: ‘We Take Absolute Exception’ To Being Told We Suck

Lovitz Tavares
Source: SNL

Dealer groups and their OEMs are like teenagers and parents. They all generally want to be prosperous and understand that prosperity involves working together, but that doesn’t mean they always get along. Sometimes they’re at cross purposes and the parents have to act a certain way while the teenagers, being teenagers, get a little bit of leeway.

It varies from company to company, depending largely on ownership structure, but the CEOs aren’t always the dads (or moms) in this scenario. They’re the step-parents. In the case of Stellantis, whose brands include Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge/Ram/Fiat/Alfa Romeo/Maserati in the United States, the stepdad is Carlos Tavares, pictured above.

The teens are not happy. In fact, they are super pissed at Tavares for his management of the company. And, sure, Stellantis is a global brand. A global brand that loses money in a lot of the world and makes a big chunk of that money back in the United States!

All of this came to light because the NDC, and its president Kevin Farrish, sent an open letter calling out Stellantis for a bunch of mistakes. From Bloomberg, which saw the letter:

Retailers accused Tavares of “short-term decision making” that boosted profits last year and padded the CEO’s compensation. The moves ended up shrinking the company’s market share and hurting the Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler brands, the national dealer council said in an open to Tavares dated Sept. 10.

[…]

“For over two years now, the US Stellantis National Dealer Council has been sounding this alarm to your US executive team, warning them that the course you had set for Stellantis was going to be a disaster in the long run,” the group said in the letter. “A disaster not just for us, but for everyone involved — and now that disaster has arrived.”

Does Farrish read The Morning Dump? Maybe! Because what he’s calling out sounds awfully familiar, though perhaps it’s just because it’s so obvious. In fact, Tavares has sometimes admitted to making mistakes and being arrogant about the problem. He can afford to be a little arrogant because he’s the highest-paid automotive CEO in the world.

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That payout seems to be one of the sticking points with dealers. They’re claiming that their revenues are down as the company just continued to build the same old models while also not investing in any replacements:

Dealers fear Tavares’ recent production cuts will further erode market share. They’ve also criticized him for thin investments in the carmaker’s aging product lineup, such as ending production of the Jeep Cherokee without an immediate replacement in the popular midsize SUV segment.

It’s not a great look, and I am sympathetic to dealers who, instead of being able to sell a bunch of new hybrid products, are stuck trying to shovel old-looking Durangos without enough incentive support. Chrysler has one vehicle, and Dodge only has four (though two are discontinued).

How did Stellantis respond? By putting out the following statement:

We take absolute exception to the letter sent by the president of the Stellantis National Dealer Council (NDC), Kevin Farrish. Last month, we introduced an action plan developed with the dealer body that has already shown results. August sales were up 21% over July, market share was up 0.7 points, and dealer inventory was reduced for two consecutive months by 42,000 units or approximately 10% in total.

This is the result of working together with our dealer network and we want to thank them for their constant support and engagement. We meet and talk monthly, have weekly calls and personal conversations at the highest level. This is where such dialogue should take place.

At Stellantis, we don’t believe that public personal attacks, such as the one in the open letter from the NDC president against our CEO, are the most effective way to solve problems. We have started a path that will prove successful. We will continue to work with our dealers to avoid any public disputes that will delay our ability to deliver results.

Yikes. It’s really giving:

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Stellantis doesn’t release monthly sales numbers so we don’t really know how well or poorly it did other than what it says above, but even a 10% improvement means its dealers are stuck with a lot of vehicles. Also, since Stellantis stopped producing a bunch of models, how much of this sell-off is just the natural consequence of not having more new cars?

Here’s the July Days’ Supply of Inventory by Brand graph from Cox Automotive – vAuto, which looks not-great if you’re a Stellantis dealer:

V Auto Supply Graphic

I highlighted the Stellantis brands in red. You can see the industry average in green. The more cars stuck on the lot the worse. If you’re wondering where Ram is, the brand is so bad that it’s too bad to even fit on the graphic (along with Lincoln).

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There’s a way to read this that is sympathetic to Tavares. He’s trying to deal with a large company that has stakeholders around the globe, including governments (try to ignore that Stellantis always seems to be in a fight with those governments for a moment), and he’s trying to reconfigure the company for a more prosperous future. This might mean less production in some places and it might be smarter, in the long term, for Stellantis to lose some dealers so it can focus on more profitable markets to protect its margin. That’s a big deal for Stellantis and, so far this year, the company has seen its revenue, sales, and gross profit margins all drop considerably. Worse than any other major automaker.

A less charitable, possibly more cynical view, is that Carlos Tavares worked under Carlos Ghosn at Nissan-Renault and saw another CEO do a good job of increasing the value of his companies without getting compensated for it at what they might feel was a proportional level. Ghosn allegedly tried to fix this problem himself with a little freelance accounting and wound up under arrest in Japan. The other Carlos saw a way to get paid out in a way that wouldn’t land him in jail.

I don’t know what the reality is. I don’t know Carlos Tavares, though I’d love to chat with him. He seems fun. And while he isn’t at any obvious risk of landing in a crate like Ghosn, he’s certainly landed himself in hot water.

Nissan Cuts Production Of Best-Selling Rogue And Frontier Truck

2024 Nissan Rogue 8 2

Nissan dealers, like Stellantis dealers, are not exactly DJ Jazzy Jeff’d with their parents, either. A whopping 40% of dealers in this country are reportedly losing money this year and Nissan’s products are average, at best. Nissan, to its credit, seems to recognize this, and is planning an aggressive product push to get itself out of the hole.

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It’s going to be rough in the short-term, with Automotive News reporting that Nissan sent a memo to its dealers saying it’ll be cutting production of the Nissan Rogue, which is the company’s best-selling model, and the Frontier. The company has tried to help by turning up incentives, but this move might not help much:

Nissan lacks an incentive strategy to drive Rogue demand, another retailer said, noting the absence of discounts on the base S trim.

“Instead of trying to generate throughput and increase sales and market share, they are going to cut stuff going down the assembly line,” the dealer said.

There are no good immediate solutions to this problem. If Nissan keeps building vehicles it has to aggressively discount it’s just going to lose more money. If it doesn’t, already pinched dealers are going to see market share drop.

It’s bad news.

Chinese Leaders To Automakers: Build Here, But Not Here

China has both a production edge when it comes to EVs and a technology edge. The production advantage (really, production overcapacity) is only a benefit if it can export a lot of cars. Unfortunately for China, that’s getting harder to do, as countries start to pay more attention to China’s sometimes antagonistic foreign policy (tacit support for Russia in the War in Ukraine) and its unfair subsidies, leading to tariffs in many places.

The technological and supply chain edge works just fine if you can build cars in other places and get around any tariffs, which is what automakers are trying to do.

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Where, though? According to Reuters, Chinese authorities have some strong opinions about where that should be:

At a meeting held in early July, the ministry told local carmakers not to invest in India, citing a directive from the central government, “strongly advised” against investing in Russia and Turkey, and used a more gentle tone to highlight risks in building factories in Europe and Thailand, one of the people said.

It also encouraged carmakers to use overseas factories for final vehicle assembly with knock-down components exported from China to mitigate potential risks stemming from geopolitical issues, said the person.

Lol. The Russia thing is interesting, but that just makes logical sense. The Turkey-vs-China thing is also interesting. It seems like China, though, is thawing with regard to Europe and Thailand. The knock-down kit thing also works, because you still build most of the car in China and the plant requirements are way lower in whatever country you’re exporting to.

Hyundai And GM Are Going To Do… Something

Gm Hyundai Large

Hyundai and GM just signed a big Memorandum of Understanding in order to collaborate on, uh, something. Here’s the statement:

GM and Hyundai will look for ways to leverage their complementary scale and strengths to reduce costs and bring a wider range of vehicles and technologies to customers faster.

Potential collaboration projects center on co-development and production of passenger and commercial vehicles, internal combustion engines and clean-energy, electric and hydrogen technologies.

The two leading global OEMs also will review opportunities for combined sourcing in areas such as battery raw materials, steel and other areas.

So… everything? I’ll probably write more about this later, when I understand it better, because I think it’s part of a larger trend.

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What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

Speaking of beefs… do not get into a fight with Kendrick Lamar. You will not win. You will not outlast him. “Not Like Us” is just a nonstop anti-Drake barrage and it’s maybe the greatest, meanest, coldest diss track in hip hop’s long history of diss tracks.

The Big Question

How long does Carlos Tavares have as CEO?

Top photo: DepositPhotos / Terminator 2

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Art Vandelay
Art Vandelay
25 days ago

To think 50 years ago Chrysler was designing the cutting edge of reusable spacecraft that would take us God only knows where, and now they’re reduced to this.

Austin Vail
Austin Vail
28 days ago

Hyundai N Vision 74 with Corvette E-ray derived drivetrain, I’m calling it now!

At least I desperately hope for that possibility…

Mechjaz
Mechjaz
28 days ago
Stef Schrader
Stef Schrader
28 days ago

How can we get Kendrick beefing with Carlos?

Signed,
Every CJDR dealer, probably

Just another example of everything wrong with way too many corporate “leaders.” Enriching themselves even if they do a garbage job.

Timbuck2
Timbuck2
28 days ago

Stellantis is a picture perfect example of horrible corporate corruption. Also, GM and Hyundai? What could possibly come from that? Those two companies are the complete opposite. GM has a slow, methodical, let’s make it just good enough approach to cars while Hyundai poops out 10 facelifts a year. I can’t see that happening. To be fair though, it does seem like GM is trying to change their image and try to play the value game lately, so props to them if they can shed that just good enough mentality and make some decent, affordable products. The trax is a good start so hope they keep it up.

Austin Vail
Austin Vail
28 days ago
Reply to  Timbuck2

Hyundai just confirmed production of the N Vision 74 will happen, so I desperately hope partnering with GM means that car will have a variant of the mid-engine AWD hybrid drivetrain in the Corvette E-ray.

Double Wide Harvey Park
Double Wide Harvey Park
26 days ago
Reply to  Timbuck2

Hyundai also follows the let’s make it barely good enough method.

GhosnInABox
GhosnInABox
28 days ago

Okay, Tavares, we’re gonna need a ouija board and the address of the widow Iacocca.

Last edited 28 days ago by GhosnInABox
Cars? I've owned a few
Cars? I've owned a few
28 days ago

Heard in the Stellantis board room: “Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

Dodsworth
Dodsworth
28 days ago

I was stuck in a crate, with Morgan Fairchild.

Cars? I've owned a few
Cars? I've owned a few
28 days ago
Reply to  Dodsworth

Whom I’ve seen naked.

Nlpnt
Nlpnt
28 days ago

Did anyone else not get the reference to a ’69 Dodge in that song the first time?

Trenton Abernathy
Trenton Abernathy
28 days ago

Tavares seems to be following the venture capitalist method of running a company. Without the tangible promise of cool new models on the horizon, I’m just getting this sense of impending doom (or maybe just disappointment) when I think of Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep. An electric Challenger is all well and good, I guess. But it seems like they’re taking the axe to iconic vehicles and namesakes without anything interesting to replace them with.

Last edited 28 days ago by Trenton Abernathy
Johnny Anxiety
Johnny Anxiety
28 days ago

My enemy(dealerships) are my friend today. Tavares could be one of the worst CEOs out there right now and that’s saying a whole helluva lot. He’s not going to fix this issue and it’s going to take someone else to do it. If that means putting someone who has autonomy/authority to run CDJR that reports to him or him getting tens of millions more in a golden parachute to go fuck off somewhere else.

WaCkO
WaCkO
28 days ago

FCA in the past 5 years priced their cars as luxury brand, but still the same crappy product as before. They only had the hellcat and hemi keeping them afloat. Well it’s all over now. Overpriced, and overstocked. They screwed their clientele. They got themselves into this mess

SarlaccRoadster
SarlaccRoadster
28 days ago
Reply to  WaCkO

To not be able to sell trucks in ‘murica, that means their prices on RAMs must be truly out of touch with the market.

Last edited 28 days ago by SarlaccRoadster
theonlyMcG
theonlyMcG
29 days ago

W.R.T. Stellantis, I’m wondering if David has heard the same things from his connections in Detroit but being in the industry, with the recent layoffs at GM, there are a lot of rumblings of Stellantis shutting down Auburn Hills completely and consolidating everything overseas. Don’t see that ending well if it turns out to be true.

Parsko
Parsko
29 days ago

Living life one quarter mile at a time…

Taargus Taargus
Taargus Taargus
29 days ago

Stellantis, which somehow makes money in this country, has managed to actively turn off their customer base, while simultaneously appealing to noone new. That’s not a tremendous strategy.

Maybe some competitive products in popular segments that don’t break immediately would help? Or if you don’t want to do that sort of hard work, at least lean into the heritage of the brands you paid for? Seriously, I don’t remember a time where I found the Jeep and Dodge brands to be more boring than they are now. The lot near me is a literal ocean of greyscale Compass’ and Grand Cherokees that could be crossovers for damn near any other brand. Have you been inside a Grand Cherokee lately? There’s genuinely zero Jeep rugged-ness outdoor-core vibes in there. Just a sea of black plastic. Next to those, 5 rows of black and white Hornets. And a single Pacifica that they have listed for 57k. Is this a recipe for success?

I say this as someone who would like the company to turn around, as I own a Voyager, and I desperately don’t want to own another orphaned vehicle. That happens to me a lot.

James Carson
James Carson
28 days ago

What are the manufacturers on your short list?

Taargus Taargus
Taargus Taargus
28 days ago
Reply to  James Carson

I usually keep an open mind when it comes to brands/manufacturers I’m willing to consider. It’s how I ended up with a Chrysler in the first place. It’s been pretty good over the year and a half I’ve had it. But I anecdotal evidence and data point to me being fairly lucky so far.

Would shop: Toyota/Honda/Subaru/Chevy/Mazda

On thin ice but would consider: Hyundai/Kia (the KiaBoyz fiasco is one of the great customer fuckings of all time)/Ford

Unlikely to consider: VW/Mitsubishi/Chrysler (I could be swayed into another Pacifica product if they manage to figure out the PHEV issues)/Jeep/Dodge

No freaking way: Nissan (the local dealers are bad, the CVTs are bad, the products are just slightly worse versions of the other Japanese manufacturers, but with Nissan stench, I just don’t see the appeal at all)

James Carson
James Carson
28 days ago

I’m down to two primary; Honda and Toyota, with Hyundai/Ka a maybe depends quality and the dealers are the stumbling blocks. I’m adverse to any German products due to serial bad experiences. Chrysler and Nissan due to atrocious quality and lousy dealers. Mazda has never built anything I could fit in although the the newer suv look like possibles. They’ve always been an afterthought to me due to their past quality issues.

Taargus Taargus
Taargus Taargus
28 days ago
Reply to  James Carson

I know a lot of happy people who have bought modern Mazdas. One friend states: it’s just like my old Protege, but not rotting to death after 5 years. Seriously, those 00’s Mazdas were great cars, but their propensity to die premature deaths due to corrosion was no joke.

I would buy a new Mazda MVP TOMORROW if they made one. Sadly, I can’t think of a car less likely to be resurrected.

James Carson
James Carson
28 days ago

I’ve read in a few places that they have solved the rust problem. The large guy fit is the next challenge. The final one is my dislike of suv in general, but the next car is the wife’s so I have minor influence on that choice.

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