Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Brazil (FCA) saw its passenger vehicle sales down and its commercial sales up in Brazil during December but it finished the month in a robust second place in the sales charts; it was the same story too for the full year as it finished in second place with a total of 380,053 passenger vehicles and Light Commercial Vehicles (LCV) combined being sold.
That total of 380,053 units breaks down to 261,072 passenger vehicles plus 118,981 LCVs, and that put it just fifteen thousand units short of General Motors (GM) which sold 394,154 units in total, which breaks down to 348,829 passenger cars and 45,325 LCVs.
Brazil ended the year on a positive note and for the month of December 171,954 passenger vehicles were sold, that was very marginally up, by 1.2%, year-on-year, while the LCV sector added another 33,364 units, and it was up too, by 14.3%, to bring the totals for the full year to 1,856,097 (+1.2%) and 317,369 (+14.3%) for passenger vehicles and LCVs respectively.
For the passenger vehicle segment, in total FCA added 22,960 new sales in Brazil during December, which represented an 11.4% fall on the same month of the previous year and undershot a positive market, the final month being undone by a sharp fall from the Fiat brand, which lost a fifth of its sales, but was partially offset by the Jeep brand, which put on almost a tenth. That performance was however up 3.1% on the previous month.
That left FCA a long way adrift of the passenger car sector’s market leader GM, which posted sales of 32,632 units for December but was nearly two thousand units clear of VW (21,090 units) with Hyundai (16,790 units) and Ford (16,743 units) third and fourth place respectively.
That breaks down to the Fiat brand selling 14,452 units, down 20.3%, year-on-year while the Jeep brand was up by 9.1% to 8,472 units. The third FCA portfolio brand in Brazil, Dodge, saw 35 units sold.
For the full year just finished FCA finished on 261,072 passenger car sales, which is up 4.4% on 2016 when it sold 249,986 units. That breaks down to Fiat with 172,361 units, down 9.3% on 2016 when it shifted 190,129 cars, while Jeep heads in the other direction, its 88,201 units sold last year compares favourably to the 59,055 units it shifted in 2016 and represents a whopping rise of 49.4%. Finally, Dodge weighs in with 495 units for the full year just finished and Chrysler with 15 units.
In the Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) segment the Fiat brand enjoyed a handy spurt during December to finish on 12,176 units, up 8.2% year-on-year when compared to the 11,258 units it sold in December 2017 and that meant the Italian brand finished the year on 118,986 units, up by 3.6% on 2016 when it sold 114,875 units for the full year. FCA is comfortably the biggest selling brand in Brazil’s LCV sector with its sales being more than two and a half times higher than its closest rival, GM, which totted up 45,325 units in 2017.
