Internal FCA Audit Determines That Sales Figures Were Inflated By Dealers

Yeah, let's blame the dealers as the sole cause of this. This is like how VW blamed a handful of rogue engineers for dieselgate.

FCA highly encouraged "internal sales" of "courtesy cars" and for those cars to be reported as sold and then resold to consumers with money on the hood from FCA.

I know of one Maserati dealer that "bought" courtesy cars from itself to report sales but those sold cars were still represented as new to customers which is illegal. The dealer was so egregious that even FCA was looking for investors to buy out the franchise.

The bit about sales staff turning over at FCA dealerships is very true locally as well. Reputable dealerships tend to have very little sales staff turn over because as a dealer you want the sales people to connect with customers and be their contact.

Although FCA is not alone in creative sales reporting, they bend the rules a lot. When the 200 was introduced, they acted like there was a stampede of people going to dealers and placing orders. Nope. They were pushing thousands of units out to dealers and calling them dealer orders.

If there is an order, there must be a sale, right??? Report it, young man!!

Dealers don't necessarily order all the cars on their dealer order list. Manufacturers call "orders" the cars they push out to dealers.

Smart dealers gather data on what is selling and reconfigure their "orders" to order what is actually selling in their region.

I wonder how long it will be before Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep/Ram is sold to Hyundai/Kia or GAC.

Uh oh! According to Left Lane, FCA's winning streak ended 3 years ago: http://www.leftlanenews.com/fca-downplays-sales-reporting-controversy-92391.html