Ford Reputation Crushed in New Survey

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 21, 9:15AM EDT

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Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) finished poorly in the latest Axios Harris Poll 100.
The survey covered the reputations of the 100 most visible U.S. companies.
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Ford Reputation Crushed in New Survey — © fredrocko / Getty Images

Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) finished last among legacy car makers in a reputation survey published since 1999. The list covers the 100 most visible U.S. companies.

The new ranking comes from the 2025 version of the Axios Harris Poll 100. Ford ranked 60th, dropping five spots from last year’s poll, putting it just behind eBay.

The other legacy car companies on the list were Toyota (4th), Honda (13th), GM (44th), Hyundai (51st), and Volkswagen (53rd).

Among all car companies, Tesla finished 95th, down 32 spots. Axios commented that this was probably because CEO Elon Musk was associated with huge federal job cuts. He has since pulled back from his work in Washington, as Tesla sales have dropped sharply.

The study’s methodology involved three waves of surveys. The first asked consumers to rank the best and worst companies. The second was used to determine the 100 companies. The third asked about “contextual” issues, including opinions about brands and topics, including politics. These were in the field from January through mid-May.

The study also helped determine opinions on subjective matters, including “character,” “ethics,” and “citizenship.” Trader Joe’s ranked first in the poll, followed by Patagonia and Microsoft. The companies at the bottom of the list included Spirit Airlines, which finished last, followed by the Trump Organization and X (formerly Twitter).

There is insufficient data to determine why Ford finished so poorly on the list. It has certainly had tremendous quality and warranty problems, which would directly affect the consumer. It finished 19th out of 32 brands in the Consumer Report’s auto brand ranking. In surveys by J.D. Power, it has done better than some other car brands.

Ford’s warranty and recall problems have cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars, based on its quarterly earnings. Management has promised to solve these problems but has not. Ford recalled 273,000 vehicles last week.

Ford Stock Price Prediction and Forecast 2025-2030

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.