Sergio Marchionne, Chrysler’s chief executive, has been preaching patience and promising a successful turnaround from the company’s bankruptcy — just over a longer timeframe than G.M.’s.
But as investors clamor for a piece of the new G.M. and also bid up Ford’s stock price, Chrysler is increasingly being cast as the odd man out in Detroit’s automotive resurgence.
Chrysler’s sales in the United States are less than half what they were five years ago and its product lineup is still in the early stages of an overhaul.
On Wednesday, the company showed off its new Dodge Durango sport utility vehicle at the Los Angeles auto show, as well as the tiny Fiat 500 microcar that Chrysler dealers will begin soon begin selling in the United States.
But industry analysts said that the company remained in low gear and was quite a way from its own public stock offering.
“Chrysler is nowhere near ready,” said David Whiston, an equity analyst with the investment firm Morningstar. “It still needs way more car model product than it has.”
Mr. Marchionne has said that Chrysler was hurt more by the severe drop in overall auto sales in 2008 and 2009 than other automakers. While G.M. and Ford took a big hit in sales, too, Ford is back to prerecession levels, and G.M. has some of the industry’s fastest-growing brands.
“We got a bloody nose on the way into the recession and I’m not sure we got it all back on the way out,” he said last week in a conference call on third-quarter earnings. “So we need to fight harder.”
Mr. Marchionne is also the chief executive of Fiat, the Italian automaker that controls Chrysler by virtue of the 20 percent stake it received in the bailout deal negotiated last year with the United States government. With Fiat at the wheel, Chrysler is working to add new fuel-efficient cars to its lineup beginning next year. But in the interim, Chrysler’s sales are stagnant and the company continues to lose money.
Chrysler cut its losses in the third quarter to $84 million, but still owes $7.4 billion to the United States and Canadian governments for loans it received. The interest payments on the loans — $899 million so far this year — has prevented it from posting any profits.
The United States government owns 8 percent of Chrysler, whose largest stockholder is the United Automobile Workers retiree health care trust, which owns 55 percent.
Mr. Marchionne, who previously led Fiat to a comeback, has pledged a public stock offering for Chrysler in the second half of 2011, suggesting that the G.M. stock would help set the stage.
“The success our competitor in town is achieving with its own offering is an indication of the receptiveness of the capital markets,” he said.
But industry analysts said it was too soon to tell whether a Chrysler stock offering would generate anything close to the interest shown by investors in G.M.
Chrysler’s sales in the United States have rebounded some from last year’s dismal performance, when it fell below one million vehicles sold for the first time in decades. Its two biggest brands, Dodge and Jeep, have benefited from some new offerings, like the Jeep Grand Cherokee. But its Chrysler brand has plunged to 14th in sales among all the brands sold in the United States, behind traditionally smaller players like Volkswagen, Subaru and Mazda.
“They’re going to have to prove themselves in the marketplace, and that’s going to take a little bit of time,” said Jeff Schuster, head of auto forecasting at J. D. Power & Associates.
This year through October, Chrysler sales have risen 16 percent, to 910,000 vehicles. As recently as 2005, Chrysler sold 2.3 million vehicles in the United States. Over all, it currently ranks fifth among carmakers in the market, behind G.M., Ford, Toyota and Honda. This year, G.M. has sold 1.8 million vehicles in the United States.
Chrysler is banking on some refreshed versions of older models, like its Sebring sedan and the Town and Country minivan, to add some luster to its namesake brand. It also should get a big lift when it rolls out a new version of its Chrysler 300 full-size passenger car.
But the company continues to struggle to get traction in the revived market for pickup trucks. Sales of the Ram pickup have increased less than 2 percent this year, while pickup sales at Ford have risen 30 percent and at G.M. by 15 percent.
In the long term, industry analysts said, Chrysler’s prospects depend heavily on the new Fiat-based cars coming in the next couple of years. Fiat was able to acquire its 20 percent stake in Chrysler without expending any cash, partly because the federal government considered Fiat’s expertise in high-mileage cars a big plus for Chrysler.
Fiat also has options to increase its stake to 35 percent by fulfilling conditions laid out by the Obama administration.
Fiat hopes that Americans have forgotten the embarrassing quality problems that led to its derogatory nickname — “Fix It Again, Tony” — and to its abandonment of the United States market nearly three decades ago.
Now, Fiat is returning with 130 new dealerships connected to existing Chrysler stores. Chrysler on Wednesday announced that the dealers that would get Fiat franchises.
This year, G.M. and Ford have been piling up billions of dollars in profits, with Ford on pace to set a record, while Chrysler remains the only Detroit automaker still in the red.
“It’s a shame that Chrysler’s sort of been in the background,” said Rebecca Lindland, director of Automotive Research for North and South America at the forecasting firm IHS Global Insight. “But I also think their day will come.”
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