New retail sales incentives, Ram hits the road, and Wranglers reap awards – Under the Pentastar

Posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 5:01 PM EDT.

New retail sales strategy; Ram Challenge tour kicks off, and Wrangler rounds up some “best buy” awards. These are three of the significant stories happening this week Under The Pentastar.

Chrysler LLC and Chrysler Financial are getting out of the leasing business in favor of new retail finance deals offering low payments. Executive Vice President for North American Sales, Steven Landry, explained more about the thinking behind the strategy and what its impact on customers at the dealership.

Steven Landry
As leasing gets more expensive, it’s getting less desirable in the marketplace. Therefore, we had to determine an alternative – maybe get ahead of the curve a little bit on leasing, and determine a way to make sure we do our customers a favor and offer them a solution – not just a regular retail solution, but one in which they can see the difference in terms of owning versus renting, for example. In today’s environment, owning makes a lot more sense than renting a car because nobody knows what the value of that car will be 36 months from now. And when you own, at the end of the term on your loan, you have a down payment again.

The Dodge brand hit the road last week for the heart of truck country – San Antonio, Texas. The first stop on the 12-city Ram Challenge Never Back Down Tour drew nearly 500 truck enthusiasts anxious to grab the wheel and put the 2009 Dodge Ram to the challenge against its top competitors in real world driving situations. The 2009 Dodge Ram 1500 hits showrooms in September.

They’re FourWheeler best buys for 2008. Jeep Wrangler Rubicon and Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon both took the magazine’s “Editor’s Pick” honors for “Best Overall Four-Wheel Drive” vehicle for the second year running. The Unlimited Rubicon was praised for being “a nearly perfect rig,” while the Wrangler Rubicon impressed editors for being a “true contender … unchallenged in how it goes about its business.”

And it turns out less is definitely more when it comes to another Jeep stablemate.. At 48.6 cents a mile, Edmunds.com found the Jeep Patriot is the least expensive sport utility vehicle to own. Edmunds.com True Cost to Own data also singled out the Dodge Durango as the least expensive large SUV to own, costing just $.706 a mile to drive.

Those are five significant stories happening Under the Pentastar this week. I’m Betty Carrier Newman reporting.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 5:01 PM EDT and is filed under Company and tagged Video. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are currently closed.