08 April 2024

Improvements to the Stellantis brands’ scores in the latest NFDA Dealer Attitude Survey have helped push average retailer-OEM relations to a near high and resulted in one of the biggest half-year swings in the survey’s history.

The average score for the all-important question ‘How do you rate your manufacturer overall?’ leapt from 5.8 out of 10 six months ago to 6.4 this month.

Kia and Mini shared top honours, scoring 9.2. However, the eight Stellantis brands shifted their combined average score from 2.6 in October 2023 to 5.3 in April 2024. While this is still below the overall average, it shows swift work by new manufacturer boss Maria-Grazia Davino who has only been in the role for eight months. Six Stellantis brands also took the top six most improved brands with Jeep rocketing 3.8 points to claim most improved brand.

At the other end of the spectrum JLR had a particularly poor result. With Stellantis lifting its brands, Jaguar, historically a poor performer, took 32^nd and last place with a score of 2.9. Land Rover was the second fastest falling brand to take 30^th place.

Interestingly despite JLR’s new ‘house of brands’ mantra that eschews Land Rover in favour of Defender, Discovery and Range Rover brands, the NFDA survey sticks to just Jaguar and Land Rover on the request of JLR.

MG, which had over recent years been climbing up the NFDA survey, saw the largest slide, losing 1.6 points and dropping below average with a score of 6.3.

The overall chart is below and a full analysis is in the April issue of Auto Retail Bulletin.

Tags: Dealer Attitude Survey, NFDA