Top 10 car makers rated for brand value

Toyota cleans up again, but Ferrari strengthens with commercialisation

ASTON Martin may be the coolest car brand but, according to the annual Brand Finance valuation, Ferrari is the most powerful; in fact, it’s among the top 10 strongest brands from any industry.

At 92 points, Ferrari is six points ahead of Porsche in second, and way ahead of Volkswagen, which surprised the number crunchers by bouncing back six points from the depths of Dieselgate to rank third.

Brand strength is based on factors such as marketing investment, familiarity, loyalty, staff satisfaction, and corporate reputation – and that result is used to calculate how much of the company’s total income was contributed by the strength of its brand – the “brand value”.

Brand Finance’s David Haigh credits Ferrari’s improvement in both strength and brand value to its increasing commercialisation.

Former chairman Luca di Montezemolo was convinced that exclusivity was the key to brand power, so he capped Ferrari’s annual production at 7 000 cars. That way there were always more Ferrari customers than there were new Ferraris to buy – which did wonders for the values of used Ferraris but didn’t actually help the maker all that much, says Haigh.

Since hard-headed Canadian Sergio Marchionne took over, however, the annual production cap has been raised to 9 000, merchandising has been invigorated and a new Ferrari theme park is set to open at PortAventura in Spain on April 7 – all of which has boosted brand value by 40% to $6.15bn (R80bn).

It places Ferrari in 15th place in brand value (as opposed to brand strength).

Toyota is still the company with the highest outright brand value at $463bn, ahead of second-placed BMW (R481bn) and third-placed Mercedes-Benz (R461bn).

In fourth place is Volkswagen, which has recovered 32% to R324bn in spite of the ongoing fallout from the September 2015 emissions scandal.

Rounding out the top 10 in brand value are Nissan (R321bn), Ford (R291bn), Honda (R276bn), Audi (R163bn), Porsche (R161bn), and Chevrolet (R149bn).