Heritage is no longer a moat: the EV shift shows which carmakers have a story
Brand-value rankings are punishing long-established automakers, but the real lesson isn't "go electric". In our view, it's that a badge without a clear promise is worth less than it was.
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What is a hundred years of history worth when the buyer is shopping for a battery, software and a price? Judging by this year's brand rankings, less than the automotive industry's marketing departments would like to admit.
Two major 2026 rankings point the same way. As Brand Finance reports, global automobile brand value fell 7% in 2026, with Tesla tumbling and BYD gaining. And as Motor Illustrated reports, in Interbrand's Best Global Brands ranking Toyota is still the most valuable car brand, but its value dropped 20% to US$59.5 billion, and nine of the 13 automakers on the list lost value. Hyundai, Kia, BYD and Ferrari gained; Range Rover left the top 100.
Heritage is a starting point now, not an asset
Read the list of winners and losers and you won't find a pattern called "old versus new". Toyota, still the most valuable car brand on the list, lost a fifth of its brand value in a year and slid from 6th to 9th overall. Ferrari, a brand built on emotion and scarcity, went up. So did BYD, which has no century of nostalgia to lean on. What the winners seem to share is that you can explain in one sentence why they exist.
That is our main argument: heritage used to substitute for a proposition. A famous badge meant reliability, or prestige, or the default choice for a family. When the product category is being redefined, that shortcut stops working. The buyer asks a new question, "what are you for in an electric world?", and a logo alone can't answer it.
Toyota's 20% drop is the uncomfortable counterexample
The easy version of this column would say that brands slow on EVs are being punished. Toyota complicates that. AutoVision's 2025 evaluation credited the company with the continuation of its hybrid advantages and a successful strategic transformation, and it put Toyota Group back at the top. Yet a year later Interbrand has it down 20%.
We read that in two ways, and both are opinions. First, we suspect brand-value rankings blend perception with financial expectations, so a strong, coherent strategy can still be marked down when the market is repricing the whole category. Second, a hybrid-first story is a defensible one but a defensive one: it tells buyers what you refuse to abandon, not what you are building. The ICCT, in its Global Automaker Rating work, describes a trend among legacy automakers, particularly US and Japanese ones, of pivoting toward plug-in hybrids and flexible platforms while arguing for more flexible regulation and relaxed timelines. That is a rational hedge. It is also a hard thing to build desire around.
Newcomers win by being legible, not by being young
The most telling detail in the data comes from the US. Brand Finance says that all but two US automotive brands recorded declines, and the exceptions were Rivian, up 20% to USD688 million, and Lucid Motors, up 41% to USD613 million. Lucid also re-entered the Brand Finance Automobiles 100 at 89th place. Keep perspective: those are small values next to the US$59.5 billion Interbrand assigns Toyota, even if the two come from different rankings. Nobody is overtaking the giants on this evidence.
But growth from a small base says something about direction. Rivian and Lucid, like BYD, look to us like companies that ask the market a single question and answer it in a way a customer can repeat. Meanwhile Tesla's fall in the Brand Finance ranking is a useful warning against reading this as a simple "EV good, combustion bad" story. Being electric is no longer a differentiator. Being clear about what kind of electric company you are is.
Stop quoting the centenary and start explaining the next ten years
Our verdict: the drop in brand value is less a verdict on powertrains than on narrative. Century-old carmakers aren't doomed, and we wouldn't bet against Toyota's scale. But the ones that treat their history as a guarantee will keep losing ground to brands that treat theirs as raw material for a new promise. A prediction, and only that: next year's rankings will probably reward the automaker that can say in one line what it is for, whether the answer is hybrid, electric or something in between.
For readers, the practical takeaway is modest. Treat brand rankings as a measure of conviction, not of car quality. For the carmakers, the message is blunter: your badge is not a plan, so show us the plan.
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