Chrysler has been the butt of the joke for years now. It only sells two vehicles, and one of them was created before the stone age, etc. etc. But if you dive into its latest first quarter sales report, you notice something astonishing. Chrysler, the brand with two cars, is handily outselling Lincoln — and it’s not even close.
You read that right. Chrysler is outselling the company that attempted a super hard relaunch in the past few years and spent millions of dollars on advertising.
Take a dive into the Q1 (January-March) for Stellantis and FoMoCo, and you discover the haunting truth. Chrysler has sold 29,113 cars so far this year. Meanwhile, poor Lincoln has sold just 19,148. Both sales are down this year compared to last year, but still. Wowza, that’s a big gap.
Look a little closer at the numbers, and they get even stranger. 26,366 of the vehicles Chrysler sold were Pacifica minivans. That means they sold just 2,745 300s. It gets beat out by all four of Lincoln’s offerings, but not by as much as Ford would like.
So, where does Lincoln go from here? Frankly, I have no idea. When people think about car companies that should die, the first answer is usually Chrysler. However, now it seems that if we killed Chrysler, we’d be cutting off our automotive healthy leg and getting rid of one of the best minivans on the market in one fell swoop.
Lincoln, I hope you get it together. You guys are real cool. The Navigator is one of the icons of the early 2000s, and that means a lot to me since that’s when I came of age. However, when you’re losing to a company that can’t be bothered to update half its lineup, you’re not doing too hot.