Jeep drives 25% of U.S. sales gains

Eleven months into 2014, automakers have sold about 780,000 more vehicles in the U.S. than at this point last year. One out of every four of those added sales was a Jeep.

Jeep’s big year has helped Fiat Chrysler grow at four times the pace of the rest of the industry, gaining momentum as the U.S. market shows signs of starting to plateau. Last month, it posted a bigger volume increase than all other automakers combined: 28,884 incremental units for Fiat Chrysler vs. 28,582 for everyone else.

The company has now posted year-over-year sales gains for 56 consecutive months, its market share jumping from 8.7 percent in March 2010 to 13.2 percent now. At the same time, retail buyers account for about eight in 10 overall sales this year, compared with just over half 56 months ago.

“It’s a whole different feeling now,” said Chuck Eddy, a Chrysler dealer in Youngs-town, Ohio, and chairman of the Chrysler National Dealer Council. “It’s not a rental-car fleet anymore. The consumer is buying our product.”

Industrywide sales rose 5 percent in November, and the seasonally adjusted, annualized selling rate hit 17.2 million, the second-highest level of any month in more than eight years. On the year, sales are on track to top 16.4 million, the most since 2006.

The biggest contributor to this year’s growth has been Fiat Chrysler, whose sales are up 16 percent in 2014. The rest of the industry, excluding Fiat Chrysler, has increased 4 percent on the year.

The Jeep brand alone has managed to boost its sales by 44 percent in 2014. Jeep accounts for nearly three-quarters of Fiat Chrysler’s year-to-date sales gain.

IHS Automotive said Jeep has increased its brand-loyalty rating — measured by vehicles registered to buyers who already owned the same brand — by 16 percent this year, third best in the industry behind Maserati and Mitsubishi. In contrast, the average brand has increased its sales to existing customers by just 0.4 percent.

November’s high selling rate was helped by automakers promoting more Black Friday deals and starting their year-end clearance discounts earlier than in the past. But incentive spending fell 2.3 percent from October and 0.2 percent from November 2013, according to TrueCar.

At the same time, average transaction prices rose 0.6 percent from a year ago, TrueCar said.

This is the third consecutive year that the industry sold more cars and trucks in November than October. From 1989 through 2011, October was the bigger of the two months every year except 2005.

Automakers sold 1.3 million vehicles last month, the most for any November since 2001.

“The combination of [near] record-high SAARs and record-high ATPs means U.S. consumers are spending more money on new cars than any other time in history,” said Adam Jonas, an analyst with Morgan Stanley. “Far, far more.”

Gasoline prices — at the lowest in four years — are helping to drive sales for Fiat Chrysler and other automakers with product lineups that depend heavily on SUVs, cross-overs and pickups.

Those segments could be even stronger in December, generally a big month for light trucks anyway, with 15 percent of U.S. gas stations charging less than $2.50 a gallon for regular-grade fuel last week, according to GasBuddy.com. Barclays Capital analyst Brian Johnson wrote in a Dec. 4 report that he expects “cheap gas” to strengthen demand for larger vehicles through at least the first half of 2015.