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Holy Cr*p! Chrysler Sees Fleet Sales Crater in June
Holy Cr*p! Chrysler Sees Fleet Sales Crater in June
By Matthew DeBord
Posted Thursday, July 2, 2009 - 11:40am
Fleet sales are the dirty secret of the Detroit auto business. By moving often slow-selling, marginally popular vehicles to rental car agencies and others, in bulk and at steep discounts, carmakers can juke sales figures.
Except when your business has totally collapsed, you’ve been eased into bankruptcy by the government, and your new master hails from the boot of Italy!
Ponder this: Chrysler posted a 42 percent sales decline in June, according to the Wall Street Journal. But nestled within that grim figure is the cataclysmic decline of 95 percent for fleet sales. 95 percent! This means that Chrysler’s fleet market was completely vaporized. They must have sold, what? Three rental cars in June?
This is far and away the worst figure I’ve yet seen in the ongoing saga of the Detroit meltdown. On the plus side, it can’t get much worse. (Do I hear a 100 percent decline in fleet sales?) If I were Chrysler’s new CEO, Sergio Marchionne, I’d get some Fiat 500s over here in hurry and fleet them just to change the facts on the ground via a hot-new-ride-that-no-one’s-really-seen-yet gambit.
Comments
Fleet cars
What kind of cars became fleet cars? Ones that CAFE standards made the big three build but individuals generally did not want to buy. And of course Detroit made almost nothing on them. Chrysler, not building cars like that, is not going to hurt their bottom line as much as its going to cost the UAW membership.