Chrysler to Expand Ram Brand

Now that Ram is officially its own brand at Chrysler Group, the company has big plans on how to expand it and grow its future sales, which includes the possibility of selling semi-trucks.

We reported earlier that Chrysler may once again delve into the semi-truck market with its newly separated Ram brand, but this isn’t the only thing in store for Ram. Since Daimler recently repossessed the rights to sell its Sprinter cargo van in the U.S., this left the Ram brand with all of two product lines — the Dakota and its full-size pickups. First up on the to-do list for the brand is to fill the gap in Ram’s lineup left by the Sprinter and add a smaller Transit Connect-sized commercial van. The small Fiat Doblo is likely to be imported to compete with the Ford Transit Connect while the larger Fiat Ducato will likely fill the Sprinter void.

“Pre-Fiat Chrysler would have had nothing to compete in many [truck] segments,” said James Bell, executive market analyst with Kelley Blue Book. “But with Fiat they do.”

Second for the brand is the deletion of the Dakota model in 2011. Eliminating this model will leave Ram with only one body-on-frame truck, and a good one at that. However, the Dakota may be replaced by a smaller unibody pickup able to achieve higher fuel economy numbers than the Dakota and still do the work required of most small trucks.

Dodge began rolling out new trucks last year with the 2009 Dodge Ram 1500 and has continued this year with the 2010 heavy-duty trucks. All of them are much improved over the previous generations. The truck rollout continues next year with the 2011 4500 and 5500 series chassis cabs, a segment Dodge entered in 2008.

All of these changes and additions to Ram’s lineup are in hopes of achieving global sales of 415,000 by 2014. Most of the increases will come from North America, where the Ram currently sells in volumes below Ford’s F-series and Chevrolet’s Silverado. Total Ram sales are around 280,000 today.

Source: The Detroit News