Chrysler only sells a minivan. The iconic brand’s days could be numbered

New York (CNN) — Chrysler was once a giant in the US auto industry – one of the Big Three, sharing a name with one of the world’s tallest buildings and with factories and dealerships spread across America.

“Once” is the key word. The company has fallen dismally far. Today the once-proud brand is a shell of its former self, an after-thought on life support, whose very future could be in doubt.

After going through not one but a string of three purchases by foreign-based automakers over the last 25 years, a bankruptcy and the second federal bailout in its history, the brand has only one car still rolling off an assembly line with the Chrysler badge on it. And it’s a minivan. Built in Canada.

Yes, Chrysler invented the minivan, but that was decades ago. A brilliant concept of design and packaging, the idea has long since been rejected by American buyers, looking to haul children and more, in favor of the brawnier style of SUVs.

That minivan, the Pacifica, is struggling, along with most of parent company Stellantis’ US models. Pacifica’s US sales are down 21% in the first nine months of the year, and down 44% in the third quarter. Meanwhile the overall pace of US car sales was up in the third quarter.

Stellantis’ problems just led to the sudden departure of CEO Carlos Travares this week and a search for both a new boss and answers to its problems. Dumping the iconic brand that used to be its flagship could end up being one of those answers, as some experts question whether there’s even a reason for the Chrysler brand to remain along with the company’s three other North American brands – Jeep, Dodge and Ram.

‘No life in that brand’

Experts who spoke to CNN said any need to maintain what was once the heart of the company is outweighed by the need to conserve its resources and provide car buyers with things they actually want to buy.

“You’ve got four brands and not enough models to sustain life among all of them,” said Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds. “You’re down to one model in a segment that is barely hanging on. There’s no life in that brand.”

While spokespeople for Stellantis insist the Chrysler brand is not going anywhere, other experts told CNN they agree that the Chrysler brand is troubled at best, and might not survive at all, given the current problems with its corporate parent.

“I think consolidation has to be in the future,” said Erin Keating, executive analyst at Cox Automotive.

In July, Tavares said that the company would consider jettisoning any brand that couldn’t make money.

If a brand isn’t profitable, “then decisions will come,” he told Bloomberg, adding there would be “no taboo” in shutting down a brand. He did say that all the brands are profitable “for the time being.”

With Tavares gone, Chrysler’s fate will be up to whoever helms the Stellantis ship next.

The Pacifica is built at the Stellantis plant in Windsor, Ontario, just across the river from Detroit. But since it’s in Canada, it could soon be subject to a 25% tariff being threatened on all Canadian imports by President-elect Donald Trump. That could make the price of the minivan unaffordable to most buyers, or unprofitable to Stellantis if it were to assume the cost of the tariff, which is unlikely.

Asked by CNN this week about its plans going forward, the company offered a stronger promise of a future for Chrysler, stating each of its 14 brands worldwide “has a 10-year time window to build a profitable and sustainable business.” But it added that “volatile markets and temporary situations may cause fluctuations.”

Asked specifically about vehicle plans for Chrysler, the company said it plans to have an all-electric version of the Pacifica available in 2026, and the Voyager, a lower priced minivan, available again under the Chrysler brand in 2025.

But there are costs to keeping the Chrysler brand, including splitting scarce marketing dollars with the healthier brands, and relatively little downside to shutting it down. When Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Chrysler’s former Plymouth nameplates were closed, automakers had to buy out their dealerships. That wouldn’t be the case in closing Chrysler, since virtually every Chrysler dealer also sells Jeep-, Ram- and Dodge-branded vehicles.

“I don’t think you lose much by absorbing Chrysler into Dodge and Jeep,” said Keating.

Kevin Farrish, head of Stellantis’ US dealership council, said he’s seen product plans for Chrysler vehicles that he can’t discuss publicly.

“By no means is that (single minivan) a forever plan,” he said. “I know Chrysler is working on other products.”

Farrish has been a harsh critic of Stellantis’s strategy, writing an open letter earlier this year that had a role in Tavares’ eventual departure. He said he’s been pleased by the company’s moves since those dealer complaints became public, such as lowering the prices of 2025 models as they arrived on dealer lots and offering incentives to move a glut of older models.

“We’re priced competitively today. That’s a major change they made at our request,” he said. “It’s not going to do fix things overnight, but it was a correct move to right the ship.”

Problems go beyond simply price

One of the problems for Stellantis is that it had become too expensive for many of its traditional buyers.

By the fourth quarter of 2023, the average Stellantis vehicle sold for $58,000 in the US, according to data from Edmunds, by far the highest in the industry. While Stellantis’ average price has declined since then, it was still the second-highest average price in the industry, at just under $55,000, in the third quarter. That was just behind Ford Motor, including its luxury brand Lincoln.

Stellantis CFO Doug Ostermann acknowledged Wednesday that the company took too long to cut prices, but cuts the last two months have started to fix the problem.

But while he said that helped to make up some of the lost market share, it won’t solve everything by itself.

“A big, big chunk of the decline in market share is simply because we, we have been blank in some very key opportunistic segments,” he told investors, specifically citing the lack of a lower priced entry-level SUV.

But the vehicles in the pipeline being cited by Ostermann are not destined to be Chrysler models. Chrysler hasn’t had an SUV of its own since the Aspen, which it stopped building with its bankruptcy in 2009.

Ostermann didn’t say anything about the future of Chrysler specifically. But outside observers still question the iconic brand’s future.

“I suspect a review of brands and lineup is one of first steps that the new (Stellantis) CEO will have to take,” said Jeff Schuster, global vice president of automotive research at GlobalData. “If not going to refill the Chrysler pipeline, you have to look at consolidation. That’s probably one of the initial steps.”

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