Toyota and Mercedes Benz are top global car brands

Toyota & Mercedes-Benz are the Top Global Automotive Brands 2011

Despite its woes in recent times with recalls and the Tsunami, Toyota is the leading global automotive brand, with Mercedes Benz just behind.

Interbrand, a branding consultancy, delivers a report on the world’s brands every year, and in 2011, despite recall woes and the devastation of the Japanese Tsunami, Toyota leads the automotive brands, with luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz just behind.

Interbrand uses three measures to gauge how effective a brand is – performance of branded product, the brands ability to secure earnings and the role of the brand in purchasing decisions – to come up with a chart of the top 100 world brands.

At the top of the tree are companies like Coca Cola, IBM, Microsoft and Google, but car brands do well with Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Honda, VW, and Ford all making it in to the top 50.

Toyota, despite its troubles with the worldwide recalls over safety and the devastation cause in Japan by the Tsunami, came in at 11th in the list.

Interbrand said that despite the problems it has faced, Toyota has ‘…forged ahead by focusing on safety and quality, modifying its leadership structure and capitalising on its world-renown green efforts.’ leading to it maintaining its ranking as the world’s most important car brand.

But Mercedes was close behind Toyota at 12th place, whith Interbrand saying:

Mercedes outranks all other automotive brands in terms of customer loyalty and satisfaction. With its new model rollout, Mercedes has responded to a market that is quickly evolving in favor of green technologies. Half of the product line is available with its BlueEfficiency package, and its Daimler “Car2Go” car-sharing mobility concept recently launched.

So it seems that despite Mercedes-Benz being essentially a luxury car maker, Interbrand reckons much of its brand appeal centres round its BlueEfficiency technology and its ‘Green-ness’.

Not sure we agree, but we are sure Mercedes will take its ‘Best Global Luxury Car Brand’ tag, whatever the reasoning.