GR Supra

Make
Toyota
Segment
Coupe

Every year market consulting agency Kantar Millward Brown goes about ranking the world's most valuable brands and putting them into its annual BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands study. The ranking factors in everything from the brand's monetary value to its impact as it's perceived by consumers. And of course, given that cars are part of our everyday lives, automotive brands earn a few of those hundred spots in the ranking.

And that may be saying a lot given that car companies compete with behemoths like Amazon, Apple, and Google - 2019's top three brands ranked in order of most to least valuable. This year, three automakers made it into the top 100 spots despite the fact that almost every automaker saw its brand value slip from where it was last year.

Those three are Toyota, Mercedes, and BMW, with the Japanese automaker taking the top spot among car brands for the 12th time since the annual study began 14 years ago. But when seen alongside all of the companies that were ranked, Toyota was only in 41st place. You won't find the next most valuable brand, Mercedes, until reaching spot number 54, right under Uber's 53rd spot in the study and right above BMW, which comes in 55th place among all ranked brands and 3rd amongst the car brands.

Maybe BMW can surpass its arch-rival if it finally beats Mercedes in the sales war this year? But regardless of internal competition, both brands are down 8 places when compared to last year, mainly because car companies' business models resonate with tech-hungry consumers less now than they did before, which partially explains why the world's largest tech companies took the top spots in the 2019 rankings.

"Consumers are more interested in brands that give them experiences rather than brands that make things. Ecosystem brands are tending to win," Graham Staplehurst, Global BrandZ Strategy Director, told Automotive News Europe. Interestingly enough, the car brand that saw its ranking rise most was Volkswagen, mainly due to the fact its image is starting to recover from the low point it was at during the Dieselgate scandal. The only new brand to break into the top ten automotive brands was Porsche, thanks in part to its electrification strategy (consumers like tech, remember?).

As for overall automotive rankings, all three large German and Japanese automakers are present. Toyota sits at the top while Honda takes 4th place and Nissan takes 6th. Mercedes' 2nd place and BMW's 3rd place rankings are followed by Audi in 8th place, Volkswagen in 9th place, and Porsche in 10th. The only American brands that make it to the list are Ford in 5th place and Tesla in 7th place.