Chrysler Global Sales Continue Growth in February

American carmaker Chrysler should be more than happy with the way its sales performed in February, as the company experienced a 12 percent increase last month as compared to the same month of the previous year. Chrysler delivered a total of 128,321 vehicles in February 2011, while deliveries in the entire year reached 229,787 units, an increase of 14 percent versus the same period of the previous month.

Still, this is less than what Sergio Marchionne expected from his American business, as a 32 percent growth rate was forecasted for the first two months of the year.

But bigger sales growth will take shape in the months to come, analysts believe, mostly because the new avalanche of products coming under Chrysler's badges needs more time to reach customers. Still, Chrysler's new models will not be able to meet Marchionne's expectations, experts believe.

"On the product side, they still need quite a bit of work," Dennis Virag, president of Automotive Consulting Group in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. "They've done a good job in basically refining the products they already had in the market."

Marchionne on the other hand plans to fully benefit from the growing production facilities of Chrysler's plants in North America. The production facility in Mexico is expected to receive a second model after the Fiat 500, with the launch likely to take place in 2012 or 2013.

"We need to decide what we're going to do with that plant," Marchionne explained while talking about the second model to be made in Mexico. "The likelihood is that we will bring in an architecture that is more versatile and will give us an opportunity to produce more than one top hat."