Jeep on a mission to reverse U.S. slide under new CEO Antonio Filosa

For nearly a decade, it looked like nothing could stop Jeep. Its U.S. sales quadrupled to just shy of 1 million in 2018, and its market share more than doubled as Americans threw money at the brand to put bigger, brawnier SUVs in their driveways.

But it's been stuck in the mud ever since, posting five consecutive years of declines that new Jeep CEO Antonio Filosa acknowledges were largely self-inflicted.

Filosa, who succeeded Christian Meunier in November, said he thinks Jeep can finally reach that elusive 1 million mark in the U.S. while doubling global volume to 2 million.

"We are building a road map for growth, both in volume and in profitability," Filosa told Automotive News Europe.

A big reason for Jeep's U.S. struggles, Filosa said, was its abandonment of important swaths of the SUV market. The brand allowed its midsize entry, the Cherokee, to languish with few updates before ultimately ending production last year. It also discontinued the subcompact Renegade, Jeep's most affordable option, while loading up the pricier end of the spectrum.

Jeep, which slid below 643,000 U.S. sales in 2023, plans to plug some of the holes in its lineup with a pair of electric vehicles, the Wagoneer S and Recon, this year.

"When you lose your main midsize SUV offer, you are cut off from a segment that in the U.S. alone is worth more than 4 million units a year — bigger than a good year of the entire German market and the same size of the whole Latin American region," Filosa said. "We will have better market coverage starting from the end of this year with the launch of Wagoneer S and Recon. If we want a profitable growth, we should be consistent in new-model launches and never again be caught off-guard in crucial segments."

To boost demand in the U.S., Jeep cut prices by $2,000 to $4,000 on models such as the Grand Cherokee and Compass in February. That helped push sales 1.8 percent higher in the first quarter, and Filosa said he expects the rest of the year to match or surpass that growth.

The Wagoneer S, an upscale midsize EV that zips from 0 to 60 mph in a Jeep-record 3.5 seconds, will face stiff competition. Filosa said he wants to take share from the Tesla Model Y, which dominates the midsize electric utility segment in the U.S., China and Europe, and from newer Cadillac and Genesis arrivals in this space.

Filosa thinks Jeep can conquest Tesla customers who "want something more sophisticated." He's expecting the Wagoneer S to attract young, high-income buyers on the West Coast, in the Northeast and Florida.

"It's a very iconic product that needs to fight against other competitors that in the U.S. and elsewhere are doing well," Filosa said. "I'm sincerely very optimistic on the impact it has when you see it in the flesh. We showed it to our Italian dealers, and they were stunned."

For the Recon, an off-roader with removable doors and glass, Filosa expects buyers to be Wrangler fans interested in electrification. Retailers have praised the Recon's design for retaining the Jeep look and remaining true to its brand identity.

"We have to leverage a huge community of happy Wrangler owners and explain to them that the Recon — even if electric — is consistent with our values and capability," Filosa said. "I think many will recognize it, and I believe that we will disrupt the industry."

Jeep's U.S. sales peaked at 973,227 in 2018. That's when Mike Manley, the brand chief who oversaw its meteoric gains, was promoted to succeed Sergio Marchionne as CEO of then-parent Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Manley recruited Meunier from Infiniti to continue Jeep's momentum, but instead it lost steam as the pandemic arrived and competitors ate away at its share.

Brian Moody, a senior editor at Autotrader, said the brand will need more options at the lower end of the market to recover the volume it's given up in the last five years. Moody is surprised that Jeep killed the Cherokee because, other than the Wrangler, it probably had more equity with consumers than anything else in the lineup, he said. Jeep sold more Cherokees in 2018 than the entire brand did in 2009, when Manley took charge of it.

"When you look at low-price cars, and you're a young person, or you're a small family and you're like, 'I kind of want to get a Jeep, but a Wrangler doesn't make sense for me,' a couple of choices would be the way to go if they're looking to make 1 million," Moody said.

In addition to Jeep's upcoming EVs, another new vehicle could help fill the Cherokee's void by the end of 2025, according to AutoForecast Solutions. Still, getting to 1 million would be a tough task for Jeep, achievable only if everything goes "perfectly right," said Sam Fiorani, the firm's vice president for global vehicle forecasting.

"In 2018, they didn't have a competitor for the Wrangler, the Renegade was selling like gangbusters at that point, even the Cherokee was doing well," Fiorani said. "So we're looking at a market that will have competitive two-row crossovers, definitely competitive three-row crossovers and more sport utilities in this market. Jeep has its work cut out for it to get anywhere near a million units in the U.S."

Filosa said he isn't ruling out the possibility of gasoline-powered Recon and Wagoneer S variants to bolster volume. The two vehicles use the versatile STLA Large platform that can support EVs as well as gasoline and hybrid powertrains.

If opportunities for combustion versions arise, "we need to grab them or somebody else will," Filosa said.

"Step by step, we could get there," he said of reaching U.S. sales of 1 million. "The first is to launch the products into the midsize SUV segment, and we have the Wagoneer S and the Recon in the pipeline. And once we are strong in midsize SUVs, we have different product options. The sky is the limit — it depends on us, what we want to do: more volume, more money, more profit, more quality."