Chart Of The Day: The Dodge Brand’s Decline Can Not Be Surprising To You

Dodge's share of the U.S. market has been sliding with great consistency for years. Much of the blame for the dramatic drop-off in 2009 — Dodge's market share fell from 5.9% in 2008 to 3.1% the next year — was a direct result of losing Ram trucks to a self-titled Ram division.

But even the post-Ram Dodge of today owns a significantly smaller portion of the market than the post-Ram Dodge of, for instance, 2013. Although America's midsize car market is declining, it certainly does Dodge no favours that the brand now possesses no midsize car. The Chrysler 200 is now left to avenge the Avenger's blood.

The fifth-generation of Dodge's minivan has been around, albeit updated, for eight model years. A shutdown at the Grand Caravan's plant in Windsor, Ontario, earlier this year hampered volume further.

The brand's two most talked-about products, the Challenger and Charger, are on the upswing, but they compete in relatively small product categories. [Dealers won't let you actually buy one, either. -Mark] The Dodge Dart is a low-volume compact. In a thriving SUV/CUV market, Dodge Durango sales are down 6% this year. It's the Journey, in fact, that's Dodge's best-selling product so far this year.

Put it all together and you have a brand, which a decade ago generated 6.9% of the U.S. auto industry's volume, now, on occasion, generating less than 3% of the market's sales, as Dodge did in March, May, and June.

Dodge sales have fallen below 50,000 units in each of the last twelve months after topping the 50K mark four times in the first-half of 2014 and five times in 2013. Year-over-year, Dodge sales in the U.S. have decreased in each of the last five months and in nine of the last eleven months.

Dodge sales are down 16% so far this year, and sadly for Dodge fans, the reasons are not difficult to decipher. Only Scion and Smart are sliding more rapidly. Fortunately for FCA, Jeep and Chrysler are among the five fastest-growing brands in America.

Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures. Follow on Twitter @goodcarbadcar and on Facebook.

The post Chart Of The Day: The Dodge Brand's Decline Can Not Be Surprising To You appeared first on The Truth About Cars.

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