This spring, a group of Jeep and Ram brand dealers told executives that their parent company’s resistance to lower prices was to blame for unsold cars and trucks piling up on their lots, people familiar with the meeting said. The automaker has cut some pricessince the dealer meeting and took the unusual step of paying dealers bonuses to accept cars from the factory. Stellantis’s U.S. sales hovered below 9% of the market in the first quarter, and fell to 7.7% in April. That was down from around 10% last year and 12.5% in 2020, according to research firm Motor Intelligence—a massive decline in an industry where a half-point drop is enough to rattle car executives. |