The traceability of the matter also begins with the production and marketing express report released by the GAC Group not long ago.
Among the huge GAC Group family, GAC FCA's production and sales data in March is particularly eye-catching. According to the express report, GAC FCA produced and sold 1 vehicle in March. As we all know, with Fiat officially withdrawing from the domestic sales network in 2016, GAC FCA currently has only one remaining brand, Jeep, so it can be concluded that the car sold is one of the free light, guide or commander. It is puzzling how the Jeep brand, which has accompanied generations of off-road feelings, has fallen into such a situation?
Jeep's bleak sales have not only been hotly discussed by many car netizens, but also discouraged consumers who hold coins to buy. There are even rumors that Jeep will become another joint venture brand that will disappear in China after Suzuki, Renault and Acura. But is this really the case? What about Jeep's true sales?
Huge offers but mediocre response, who is the root cause of Jeep's poor sales?
With these questions in mind, The Car Buyer visited a GAC FCA dealership in Beijing. When he first entered the store, he found that in addition to the two imported models of Wrangler and Grand Cherokee, the joint venture plate only placed two exhibition cars, the Grand Commander and the Free Light. Chejun also learned that due to the epidemic, manufacturers are facing great pressure to put into production, and from the current national epidemic situation, it is still unknown when production will be resumed. In the case of the dealership visited by the car buyer, the guide and the free man were out of stock earlier this month, and customers not only could not buy a current car, but also could not book at all.
"Considering that the big commander is the main sales model, the manufacturer gives priority to scheduling, plus there is now a discount of about 45,000 yuan, so this car is currently sufficient, but it is limited to the two-wheel drive deluxe version and the four-wheel drive deluxe version of the two-matched version, the minimum and top models are currently no existing cars; the other free light situation is similar, the customer can only order a version of the four-wheel drive Nighthawk version, which currently has a discount of about 30,000 yuan." A salesman told the car buyer that "if the customer is sincere and determined, there is still room for negotiation between the two cars." It can be seen that the lack of production capacity of manufacturers, resulting in tight supply of dealers, does exist objectively.
In addition, the sales also told the car buyer that "in March, the store sold about 70 cars, although the Wrangler and the Grand Cherokee accounted for more than half of the imported cars, but the Free Light and the Grand Commander combined how there are more than 30." Combined with the production and sales of 1 car in the express, the new car sold by this dealer is basically the "inventory" produced before March.
To be sure, at the moment of the epidemic, not only GAC FCA, but most manufacturers have suffered unprecedented blows to varying degrees. From upstream factory scheduling and parts supply, to midstream logistics and transportation, dealers stepping up inventory clearance, and then to the weakening of downstream end consumer spending power, a series of chain reactions have led to a "sluggish situation" in today's car market. The car buyer contacted the relevant people of GAC FCA to ask about how to solve the problem of production capacity in the future, but as of press time, it still could not wait for a clear answer.
It is true that the serious shortage of production capacity in the GAC FCA plant, even if it has not seriously affected the dealers, but the lag in scheduling will gradually appear in the next few months, when the problem of "supply cuts" of dealers will be solved, and it will be more difficult to deal with.
The declining Jeep, should it be like returning to its former glory?
Although the performance of GAC FCA in March was really surprising, the performance of GAC FCA since its entry into China is most appropriate to describe the performance of the Jeep brand in China since it entered China.
As early as 2010, GAC Group and FCA Group (now one of the main bodies of Stellantis Group) established GAC FCA Group with a 50:50 shareholding ratio, while the only remaining vehicle brand Jeep was officially domesticated in 2015.
In 2016, Jeep launched three SUV products: Free Light, Liberty Man and Guide. Because these models are mainly positioned as urban SUVs, and the price covers the mainstream price range of 100,000-300,000 yuan, they have received a good response once they were launched, and the sales volume reached 179,900 units that year.
In 2017, the Jeep brand ushered in a highlight moment, not only achieving annual sales of 222,300 vehicles, but also achieving a substantial increase of 57% year-on-year. What impressed the car buyer was that at that time, Jeep also claimed in China that he could sell a car every 2 minutes.
However, the good times did not last long. In 2018, with the "machine throttle" incident as the fuse, Jeep's overall market began to decline. Full-year sales were 125,000 units, down 39% year-on-year. Since then, it has stagnated, and sales have continued to decline. Sales in 2019 were 73,000 units, and in 2020 and 2021, sales fell to 40,700 units and 20,400 units, respectively, due to the recurrence of the epidemic.
What people did not expect was that after entering this year, the sales of the Jeep brand continued to decline: sales in January 2022 were 686 vehicles, sales in February were only 134 vehicles, and sales in March were only 1. If there is one word to describe its market performance, it is really "miserable".
In most people's impressions, the essence of the Jeep brand must be a Wrangler with pure off-road genes, but the car has not yet achieved localization. In other domestic models, including free light, guide, big commander, Jeep brand natural off-road feelings have not been inherited, but more to pursue the practicality of the ordinary urban SUV positioning of self-positioning.
With the rapid change of new technologies, these urban SUVs seem to be unable to find other attractive selling points in addition to the off-road attributes of Jeep, so it is reasonable to be "not bought" by consumers.
The sluggishness in the general environment, coupled with the lack of internal driving force of the Jeep brand itself, how to go in the future does require GAC FCA to re-examine it.