Fiat's U.S. dealers, once optimistic, are in the dark on the brand's future

In the U.S., more Jeeps are sold every four days than the number of Fiats likely to be purchased in all of 2019.

That's the bleak reality for Fiat, a brand whose stylish Italian veneer and youthful energy have been sapped by an unforgiving market.

Lower gasoline prices removed a major selling point for the brand's small cars, and its road map has no clear destination. One Fiat dealer described the factory's guidance about the brand's future as "radio silence."

This wasn't how the late FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne drew it up. The hard-charging executive compiled a list of successes with his stewardship of the profitable Jeep and Ram brands, but a U.S. comeback by Fiat isn't among them.

"They came out thinking Fiat was going to be Gucci, that it would be this sophisticated thing," said one Northeast dealer who was awarded a Fiat franchise in 2010 but backed out before building a store. "As time evolved, it became obvious to us that this was a dream in someone's brain named Sergio Marchionne."

Fiat targeted U.S. sales of 50,000 vehicles in 2011 and 78,000 in 2013. Instead, after peaking at 46,121 five years ago, sales are on pace to fall short of 10,000 this year, and its market share sits at less than one-tenth of 1 percent. Fiat entered May with nearly six months of inventory, according to the Automotive News Data Center, the most in the industry.

Former Fiat dealer Lisa Copeland remembers when things were different. Copeland said her Texas store thrived initially because it understood its base and the experience it needed to provide. Fiat of Austin captivated visitors with a fashionable mystique — complete with an in-store runway — that made it a powerhouse within the brand's dealer network. Its 972 deliveries in 2012 led all Fiat dealerships and earned a visit from Marchionne.

But a few years later, mounting challenges were taking a significant toll on dealers, including Copeland.

"Issues with production, dealer profitability. As all of that started to wane, you had dealers disengaging. It got really tough," she said. "I still fundamentally believe that it's a really cool car with a cool heritage. I don't think we did a great job of carrying that messaging into the U.S."

Asked about the brand's future, an FCA spokesman said Fiat "continues to offer an attainable all-turbo lineup of Italian-designed, fun-to-drive cars" in North America with the 500, 500X, 500L and the 124 Spider. The spokesman, in a statement, said that, "as outlined in the five-year plan last year, Fiat (together with Chrysler and Dodge) will get 25 percent of investment spend and represent 20 [percent] of net revenues."

But at the brand's current sales trajectory, there soon won't be much left in which to invest. In April, Daimler said it was pulling the plug on its small-car brand, Smart, amid similar struggles.

Fiat has 377 U.S. dealerships, which it calls studios. Of those, 281 are tied to Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram showrooms, 90 are paired with Alfa Romeo and six are standalone stores.

As the brand's challenges mounted, FCA agreed in 2016 to no longer require separate Fiat showrooms. It also offered rent assistance to dealers who continued to operate standalone stores.

But the help came too late for Kelly Automotive Group, which gave up its Fiat franchise in December 2015, said COO Brian Heney.

The Danvers, Mass., group opened one of the first Fiat stores in New England in December 2011. Heney said the initial excitement surrounding Fiat was done in by a shallow product portfolio, and the group ended up losing millions on the brand.

"We always said Fiat would be fine if we could move it into our Jeep-Chrysler store and put them together," Heney said. "They told us, 'No, no, no.' Then after we turned it back in, that's what they allowed dealers to do. It was too little, too late for us."

The opening act of Marchionne's quest to revive the brand in the U.S. began in 2010 when the automaker began selecting 130 pioneering dealers.

Optimism abounded as dealers crafted business plans for their standalone operations. The fledging network launched with just one vehicle, the fuel-friendly 500, and dealers hoped their Fiat stores would eventually gain Alfa Romeo and become posh Italian car boutiques. Fiat customers would "have a strong appreciation of design, style and fashion," Chrysler said in 2010.

John Yark, president of Yark Automotive Group in Toledo, Ohio, had an open building that could accommodate a Fiat store. He liked the lineup he saw before the brand launched and said getting into the Fiat business was an "easy decision." "I was impressed with the leadership of Sergio," Yark said. "Sergio was like nobody I had ever seen in my career."

Yark's Fiat store, which later combined with Alfa Romeo, was selling 200 to 300 cars a month during its best years.

Yark said the brand's celebrity-driven marketing featuring singer Jennifer Lopez and actor Charlie Sheen broke through the clutter. An early Lopez spot, though, turned into a polarizing event because it appeared to show her driving through the Bronx when she actually filmed her part in Los Angeles. A double was used in the New York scenes.

Despite the brief controversy, several dealers pointed to Fiat's advertising as a strength.

Steven Wolf, who owns Helfman Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep-Ram in Houston, said Fiat expanded his consumer base. The brand, housed in a separate building, drew import buyers who Wolf said wouldn't set foot in a Chrysler dealership.

Wolf said Fiat was a building block that helped him earn Alfa Romeo and Maserati franchises. All three brands are now sold together at Helfman Imports. But what was supposed to be synergy ended up contributing to Fiat's troubles.

"Once Alfa and Maserati started going, they cooled the Fiat advertising," Wolf said. "There are lots of incentives and programs to help sell them, but there's not a lot of marketing behind it."

For some dealers, frustration about being passed over for an early Fiat franchise turned into relief after they watched the brand over the years.

Maine dealer Don Lee said he saw potential in Fiat but wasn't offered a franchise in 2010. Lee, president of Lee Auto Malls, which sells FCA vehicles, had a building ready to go and thought Fiat's allure was simple: Chrysler lacked a small import, so Fiat could fill a hole.

But missing out on Fiat freed him up for a more lucrative opportunity in 2015, when he turned that extra building into a Ram Truck Center.

On the flip side, the Northeast dealer who was chosen for a Fiat franchise and later changed his mind relishes that decision. He ended up building a dealership for a German luxury brand on a $1 million piece of land he bought instead of a Fiat store.

"It was the best thing I ever did," said the dealer, who spoke to Automotive News on condition of anonymity. "Now guys are throwing it away, closing down."

When Fiat launched, small cars appeared to have big potential. U.S. gasoline prices spiked to an average of $3.91 a gallon in May 2011, according to the Energy Information Administration, two months after the Fiat 500 reached dealerships.

Gary Brown, who sells Fiats and Alfa Romeos on New York's Long Island, saw the brand as an opportunity to grab additional market share and offer his customers an alternative to the revived Dodge Dart.

An entry-level option with good fuel economy made sense to him as fuel prices seemed to keep rising. He remembers being excited about the chance to sell Fiats. Now, gasoline prices have been averaging less than $3, and he wonders where the brand is going.

"I think one of the big opportunities is overall communication from the brand itself. What [do] they want to be in two years and how are they going to get there? That's one thing dealers really need to know," said Brown, a former chairman of Chrysler's national dealer council. "Without that vision and communication of that vision, we're in the dark on what to do."

Copeland, who was Fiat of Austin's managing partner and sold her stake in 2016, remembers being excited to have a brand she considered a blank slate. While many other Fiat dealers had multiple brands to juggle, Copeland could give all of her attention to Fiat because it was the only store in which she had equity.

She said that singular focus gave the store a better chance at success, and she had faith in brand leaders such as Laura Soave, who ended up leaving the company in November 2011, and her successor, Tim Kuniskis.

Copeland studied small-car company Mini along with Subaru and Volkswagen — iconic brands that know how to play to their audiences, she said. Copeland believed Fiat could be in the same league.

She built her store's marketing strategy with inspiration from what she called those brands' tribe-building abilities. Fiat of Austin nurtured relationships with women, millennials and the LGBT community. It attracted early adopters and reeled in affluent buyers.

Copeland said the store catered to its base without "worrying about the rest of the world." The rest of the world "was never going to come buy our car," she said.

"I knew the brand wasn't for every consumer. We stopped advertising to the masses," Copeland said. "It was knowing who our customer was and speaking directly with them."

But after that auspicious beginning, gasoline prices steadied and later declined, and consumers shifted from cars to crossovers. Quality fell short of expectations — a resurgence of the "Fix It Again, Tony" image that led Fiat to bow out of the U.S. in 1983 — and dealers jumped ship as profitability waned. U.S. sales dropped to about 33,000 in 2016 and to fewer than half of that in 2017, as the brand was relegated to pushing out special-edition models to spice up its portfolio. In the first five months of 2019, sales have plunged 39 percent.

In addition to all of the negative external factors, Copeland is unsure Fiat ever decided what it wanted to be in the U.S.

"I don't know that we ever knew who we were going to be when we grew up because we were such a young brand," Copeland said.

"Nationally, we tried every trick in the book to sell cars."