Ford and Chevrolet top loyalty rankings; Toyota falls

Ford and Chevrolet topped S&P Global Mobility's 2023 loyalty ranking of mainstream brands for the first four months of the year, while Toyota fell to seventh place, the market research firm said Tuesday. The drop could be due to conquests by Tesla, with migrations to the electric vehicle maker up for almost every mainstream brand.

Toyota is typically "neck and neck" with Ford and Chevrolet, analyst Tom Libby said during a webinar held by S&P. Ford recorded 59.5 percent brand loyalty this year through April, followed by Chevrolet, at 57.1 percent, and Subaru, Nissan, Kia and Hyundai. Toyota was down 5.7 points from the same time last year to 52.3 percent.

"We will obviously have to watch the results going forward, but just in these first four months, Toyota is a disappointment," Libby said.

Though Ford topped the ranking, the brand essentially matched its loyalty from the same time last year, while Chevrolet was up 2.6 points.

The percentage of customers who migrated from Toyota to Tesla was up 2.1 points to 5 percent year over year.

Though EV sales remain small for many brands, "there's no doubt that Toyota, Honda and some other Asian brands are being impacted tremendously by Tesla," Libby said.

Tesla again topped the loyalty ranking for luxury brands, at 68 percent, 18.8 points above BMW in second place. Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and Cadillac rounded out the top five. With no other luxury brand above 50 percent, Tesla is the only one that is keeping more customers than it is losing, Libby said.

That is a notable change from past years, driven by "the extraordinary clout and success of Tesla," Libby said. The EV maker's loyalty is so dominant that it is up 1.1 points despite not having released a new vehicle since 2020, he added.

Tesla is also having a strong impact on fuel type loyalty. The average EV loyalty S&P recorded in April was 67.8 percent, but that fell to about 49.7 percent when Tesla was removed from the data set.

Loyalty remains "down substantially" compared with pre-pandemic measures for most mainstream brands, Libby added. Mitsubishi, Mazda, Dodge, Hyundai, Buick and GMC are the only brands to have shown improvement in brand loyalty measures from the first four months of 2019. On the other side, Fiat was down 10.9 points, and Ram was down 12.2 points.

Tesla's loyalty was up 5.4 points since the first four months of 2019.