Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram dealers were in open revolt against parent company Stellantis NV for much of last year.

Poor corporate decision-making had tanked sales, the retailers said, while a mishmash of overpriced vehicles piled up on their lots and their profits plummeted to Great Recession-era lows. They sent sharply worded letters and publicly griped that the once-proud company had lost touch with the American consumer.

Much has changed since then. A new CEO, Antonio Filosa, is in charge and based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, not Europe. He's promised to listen to the U.S. dealer body's input, unlike former chief Carlos Tavares. The company has adjusted prices and streamlined trim levels, and is launching a series of new and refreshed models that dealers say better align with an American audience that appreciates V-8 engines and hybrids.

The automaker has launched a hiring spree to better support its more than 2,000 U.S. stores in sales, parts and service, and has also pledged to spend more on local advertising.

Stellantis dealers have cheered many of the changes and are finally starting to feel optimistic about the future of their businesses, according to multiple interviews this week.

However, recent sales and market share figures show the company's turnaround effort remains stuck in first gear.

“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done still — got to get through some bad product, and praying that the R&D comes through," said Jerry Romano, a Hawaii dealer. "But I think that they’re making the right moves. It’s definitely a better position than it was last year at this time."

Romano and several other dealers told The Detroit News that their monthly sales are essentially flat from a year ago, though others said they are starting to see growth in recent months. In the third quarter, Stellantis' overall U.S. sales increased 6%, snapping a series of quarterly declines that stretched back two years; full-year sales will be released in the coming days.

"Sales have been, I don't want to say stagnant, but year-over-year it's pretty similar," said Mark Trudell, general manager at Extreme Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram in Jackson, Michigan, who added he's found some momentum in December and is optimistic about 2026. He said corporate communication with dealers has improved, as have the automaker's vehicle incentive programs.

Stellantis U.S. market share has fallen sharply in recent years — from 12.5% in 2020 to just 7.7% through the first 11 months of this year, according to car-shopping firm Edmunds.com Inc. That's a lower share than predecessor Chrysler Group plunged to during the Great Recession when the company went through bankruptcy.

Filosa told investors earlier this month that the company's U.S. market share has improved slightly for the second half of the year, and that the company has "fixed the dealer inventory management issue that was so bad last year."

The Edmunds data confirms that Stellantis models aren't usually sitting as long on dealer lots as they did in 2024. But the company's vehicles still take many more days to sell than the industry average, with Rams and Chryslers moving especially slowly in recent months. In October and November, for example, Ram's trucks and vans were taking more than twice as long as the industry's 63-day average to sell, the Edmunds data shows, which is substantially worse than earlier in the year.

Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds, said he expects the automaker's U.S. turnaround to take several years as it slowly seeks to win back customers that it increasingly lost to competitors over the last half-decade.

"It's not gonna happen overnight," he said. "It's not gonna happen from one or two products, or a few motor swaps, things like that. It's gonna be incremental. It's gonna be potentially painful."

Stellantis executives have acknowledged the recovery will take time but stress they are laying the groundwork and listening to dealer input in a bid to rebuild trust.

After cutting dealer support staff in recent years, the automaker said it has added 200 people to support sales, service and parts field operations across the country. In 2026, it will also reopen physical business centers around the country that support dealers and add a new business center location in Chicago, spokesperson Ann Marie Fortunate said.

The dealer-focused hiring spree is part of a larger push to add about 2,000 positions in areas also including manufacturing, quality and engineering. Much of the hiring focus has been centered on the automaker's Michigan headquarters, which dealers see as a welcome shift after Tavares had focused on American job cuts and outsourcing.

Fortunate also confirmed that the company will increase its local advertising spending to support dealers in 2026. It recently brought back dealer ad associations, a system where the company pools resources with dealers in certain large markets and makes collective decisions around advertising, incentives and stocking levels. Dealers said the automaker ditched the regional associations years ago as a cost-saving measure, and they view it as a positive sign that the organizations are back.

Mike Bettenhausen, a Chicago-area dealer who heads the company's national dealer council, said retailers appreciate Filosa's willingness to try out new strategies to bring more customers into stores. He said dealers "desperately need the traffic."

Stellantis is launching several new vehicles in the coming months, including the redesigned Jeep Cherokee and gas-powered versions of the Dodge Charger, both of which are shipping to dealer lots now.

Retailers said these vehicles will start to fill glaring holes in the automaker's lineup, and ideally, they can "provide that much-needed boost to dealer profitability that has been missing for some time," Bettenhausen said.

Stellantis' models had become too "vanilla" the last few years, said Randy Dye, who owns a Florida Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram dealership. "Our cars are not just appliances, they’re fun," he said, yet the company's past leadership "took all the fun out.”

Now that's starting to change — including as Dodge brings back its loud, gas-powered muscle car and as both Ram and Dodge put Hemi V-8s back inside pickups and SUVs: “These are car people running this company now,” Dye said.

"The more we get these cool vehicles into our lineup ... that's a big deal," said Ralph Mahalak Jr., who owns Stellantis dealerships in Michigan, Ohio and Florida.

He's instructed his team to heavily promote the new models on social media as they land at his stores. Models like the Charger might not sell in huge numbers, he added, but can bring "some enthusiasm to my showroom."

One vehicle dealers do anticipate can juice sales: the reintroduced Cherokee, which, for now, is offered solely as a hybrid, part of a wider push into hybrids underway inside Stellantis.

The company ended production of the last generation of the Cherokee about three years ago and didn't have a replacement, a move that flummoxed dealers, considering the model competes in the best-selling midsize SUV segment.

"Cherokee, Cherokee, Cherokee — I've been missing that one, big time," said Bill Golling, who operates Stellantis stores in Metro Detroit. Under Tavares, he said, "we discontinued too many car lines, too soon. How do you not have a Cherokee for three years?"

Other reinforcements will take longer to arrive. Ram plans to introduce an all-new midsize truck that dealers expect to sell in large numbers, but it won't be ready until 2027. Jeep is soon releasing an all-electric model called the Recon. Still, the retailers say they are most looking forward to when the brand offers the same boxy off-roading model in a gas-powered variant, which they expect will be more popular; timing for that isn't yet available.

Drury said he expects it will be a slog for Stellantis to once again approach double-digit market share in the United States — especially at a time when the overall new car market is expected to shrink next year. But it can make some gradual improvements.

"This has been a rough year for them, right?" he said. "But I do think that next year, at least, there's some light there. There's at least something to look forward to."

©2025 www.detroitnews.com. Visit at detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.