I remember that the helmsman of an independent car brand once sighed like a danger in peace: Will XX cars survive next year?
Such worrying considerations may be more appropriate for some joint venture brands with sluggish market performance: Suzuki is delisted, Acura announces its withdrawal from the domestic market in 2023, and Jeep sells only one unit in March this year.
On March 9, 2010, GAC FCA was jointly invested by Guangzhou Automobile Group Co., Ltd. and Fiat Group Automobile Co., Ltd. at a price of 50:50, and the Jeep brand was officially localized in 2015. During this period, as the first model of GAC FCA, the Free Light was greatly welcomed by the market as soon as it was launched, and later Jeep launched the Liberty Hero and the Guider in 2016.
Later, Jeep launched the Free Hero and The Guide in 2016, respectively, thanks to the good reputation accumulated by Beijing Jeep, the gac FCA Jeep brand reached annual sales of 179,900 units in 2016 and 222,300 units in 2017, respectively. These two years can be said to be the highlight moment of GAC FCA.
If you look at it from a historical point of view: Jeep's card face is not bad at all, it has a history, a story, and is the originator of an off-road vehicle with pure blood. An advertising slogan called "Jeep" that not all jeeps has successfully impressed thousands of consumers, and at the same time made the image of Jeep brand SUV experts deeply rooted in people's hearts.
"The love of the mountains and seas, mountains and seas can be leveled", "or in the dream, or really go with the Wrangler" similar propaganda words we can often see, good at playing emotional marketing Jeep has indeed stirred up a group of users who yearn for poetry and distant places.
The author remembers that Jeep also invited the well-known business elite Wang Shi to speak for the Grand Cherokee, and the advertising slogan of "strength makes the feelings land" is still classic. And Jeep has also successfully established a high-end brand image with the Grand Cherokee.
However, the good times are not long!
Jeep's terminal sales began to decline year by year from 2018: 124512 units in 2018, 72,956 units in 2019, 40,659 units in 2020, 20,396 units in 2021, 1,856 units in January-February 2022, and 1 unit in March 2022. If you use one word to describe its market performance - "miserable".
Due to the decline in sales, on September 8, 2021, Stellantis Group issued a statement saying that GAC FCA's plant in Guangzhou was closed, leaving only the Changsha plant to produce series models.
As far as gac group's 2021 financial report is concerned, the performance of GAC FCA is also very sluggish, and its capacity utilization rate is only 4.97%.
Putting aside the changes in the external environment and the internal volume of the segmentation field, Jeep's domestic market to today is caused by many factors.
2018 can be said to be a watershed in GAC FCA's sales, and the fuse of which is the free light's "machine throttle" incident.
GAC FCA's attitude at that time was: "only replace and do not repair and do not recall", and even dealers not only refused to admit that there were quality problems in the product, but also adjusted the oil scale line in the car without authorization. This series of measures angered the owners and was exposed by the March 15 evening party in 2018. Finally, under the pressure of public opinion, GAC FCA began to recall related models.
The incident significantly damaged Jeep's brand image. To this day, we can still see free light complaints on the relevant websites.
It should be known that at the end of 2016, GAC FCA dealers once exceeded 400, and the annual sales of 2 million FAW-Volkswagen dealers in that year were only more than 800. It is conceivable that in the case of reduced product sales, the substantial expansion of GAC FCA has undoubtedly made dealers worse.
In the face of an increasingly competitive market environment, many car companies will be model changes, replacement, push new cycle significantly shortened, and we go to the official website of GAC FCA to see its product matrix:
At present, Jeep has models on sale such as Guide, Grand Commander, Free Light and Wrangler, Grand Cherokee, etc., of which Wrangler and Grand Cherokee still maintain import status. The guide's latest launch time is December 2020; the latest model of the Grand Commander (including the Grand Commander PHEV) is August 2021; the latest model of the Free Light is launched in November 2020; and the free man whose transmission has been much criticized has been discontinued. Among these models, the most popular guide sold only 12,997 units in 2021, and fell by 39.17% year-on-year.
If the essence of Jeep's brand is off-road, then the best "spokesperson" of its brand is Wrangler, more bluntly speaking, the domestic SUVs under other Jeep brands are just urban SUVs under the guise of off-road, and they and other similar models do not have significant barriers in off-road hard power. From another point of view, compared with the Wrangler, the hot sales and a car of tank 300 is more fragrant, the comfort configuration is more abundant, the off-road ability is also good, and even many consumers regard the tank 300 as the wrangler's replacement.
In addition, the Jeep brand product line is too single, and suVs are all it is. It should be known that Great Wall Motors, which aspires to be the leader in the SUV market, has also begun to re-energize in the field of cars. In the new energy market, we noticed that the Big Commander and Wranglers have launched plug-in hybrid versions, but they have not made many waves in the same level market. It is worth mentioning that Jeep is still a blank in the field of pure electricity, and it should be known that GAC Mitsubishi has also launched the first pure electric SUV Atuka.
Today, Jeep should realize that the era when consumers paid for their feelings is over.
The author believes that the downturn in the market performance of brands is never simply "unsatisfactory". Market competition is cruel, sailing against the current, not advancing or retreating. Technology, products, quality, marketing, word of mouth for car companies are interlinked, and each link is crucial, a ring is not done well, it is easy to form a "barrel effect". Objectively speaking, the Jeep brand does not rule out the possibility of withdrawing from the Chinese market in the future.