2014 Jeep Wrangler Leads Brand to Best-ever June Sales

As they have for every month of the year so far, the 2014 Jeep Wrangler, Jeep Compass and Jeep Patriot all set new volume records in June, propelling the Jeep brand to its own new benchmark for June sales.

The tale of the tape for Jeep's record-setters:

• 2014 Jeep Wrangler—16,439 sales, up 2 percent
• 2014 Jeep Patriot—6,873 sales, up 3 percent
• 2014 Jeep Compass—5,302 sales, up 5 percent
• Jeep in June—57,006 sales, up 28 percent

For what it's worth, the 2014 Jeep Wrangler also scored a couple of high-profile-ish industry awards last month, winning its segment in the Best Retained Value Awards from Edmunds.com and, in the shape of the 2014 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, the Vehicle Satisfaction Awards from AutoPacific.

Now, if you're wondering how the brand ended up with that kind of sales advance despite relatively small volume bumps for its trio of record breakers, the answer can be found in the 2014 Jeep Cherokee. The compact SUV/crossover has become a low-level hit for Jeep in its first year on the market, tallying another 13,337 deliveries in June, and that's compared to, of course, a total of zero deliveries in June 2013. That number isn't that high in absolute terms, as the segment leaders can often top 30,000 monthly sales, but it was a few units above entries like the Subaru Forester and Kia Sorento.

The one vehicle in the red for Jeep last month was the Grand Cherokee, which still led the brand in overall volume—with 15,055 sales—despite a decline in volume of about 9 percent.

In terms of total sales for the Chrysler Group, the automaker posted its highest June volume in more than six years last month, when it delivered 171,086 new vehicles and a 9 percent increase in sales.

The party line from Reid Bigland, head of U.S. sales for the Chrysler Group LLC: “In spite of two fewer selling days in June versus a year ago, we were able to increase our sales 9 percent and post our strongest June sales in seven years. Month-over-month sales of our all-new Chrysler 200 increased from a few hundred units in May to more than 5,000 in June as inventory of the mid-size sedan continues to build. In addition, sales of the Jeep brand increased 28 percent and our Ram Truck brand 14 percent helping to lead Chrysler Group to its 51st-consecutive month of year-over-year sales growth.”