Ford trucks own the highest brand loyalty among any segment, while Toyota’s brand loyalty stood out among multiple categories in JD Power’s 2026 U.S. Automotive Brand Loyalty Study.
Driving the news: Looking at whether owners stayed with the same brand when trading in a vehicle, JD Power compiled insights from across the industry.
Overall brand loyalty in 2026 jumped to 50.2% from 49% the previous year.
Additionally, four different segments had leaders above 60%, while the industry faced several headwinds from rising prices, changing inventory, and inflationary economic pressures.
“Given everything that went on in the year, it could have gone sideways very easily,” Tyson Jominy, senior vice president of OEM customer success at JD Power, told CDG News.
Ford leads trucks: With its top-selling truck, the F-150, Ford led all brands in loyalty in any segment at 66.2%.
It was the first straight year for Ford to lead the truck category.
Jominy noted Ford’s options across different price points in the truck segment to keep it connected to customers.
“The F-Series has been the number one selling vehicle for 50 straight years, and that's primarily based around how well the vehicles meet consumer needs,” Jominy said. “One thing we found that's really interesting for Ford more than any other truck maker is how well they have the truck segment covered in terms of price, from Maverick all the way up through $100,000 plus Super Duties. Ford has the entire truck price spectrum covered better than anyone else.”
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Toyota tops multiple categories: Toyota turned in the top loyalty among the mass market cars with a 64.8% rate.
Toyota also led the mass market SUV brands at 63.8%.
Additionally, Toyota was second to Ford in the truck segment with a healthy 62.2% loyalty rate.
“Toyota's all over the map here for loyalty, winning and doing very well retaining their owners,” Jominy said, noting the quality of vehicles and service history.
Porsche, Lexus lead premium brands: Porsche continued to lead brand loyalty among premium car brands at 61.3%, 12 percentage points ahead of BMW in second at 49.3%.
For premium SUVs, Lexus narrowly outperformed BMW by nearly 3 percentage points at 59.2%.
Bottom line: Jominy points out that brand loyalty is dependent on multiple factors, but the best-performing brands are ones with consistency from the automakers producing quality vehicles and the dealers providing quality experience in sales and service.
“It's one of the elements where the automaker and the dealer both have to perform to make it happen,” Jominy said. “So you can't have a good vehicle and have a terrible ownership experience, bad CSI when you visit your dealership. And likewise, even the greatest dealership still can't overcome a product that isn't meeting expectations or isn't meeting needs. So you have to have both elements working together to keep customers loyal to your brand.”
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