WHILE VOLKSWAGEN has taken a well-deserved brand-value tumble of a massive $US12 billion in the wake of the emissions cheating scandal, Toyota Motor Corporation has seen its brand’s relentless march in value to add another $US8 billion in the latest year to $US43 billion.

Toyota moved three places to 11th spot on the ranking table against the world’s top brands headed by the likes of Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon and Microsoft in the survey conducted by the London-based Brand Finance which claims to be the world’s leading independent brand valuation and strategy consultancy.

Hyundai, which is racing up the ratings chart of 500 brands, gained the third largest increase in brand value by an auto group by adding $US4.3 billion, just shy of Mercedes-Benz which added $US4.7 billion in the year. BMW added $US1.8 billion to its total brand value.

Apart from Volkswagen’s self-inflicted and catastrophic loss of brand value, Honda continues to pay the price of failing to maintain its product development programs in the wake of the GFC and the

sanitised model line-up of recent years. These translated into a loss in brand value of $US3 billion in the past 12 months.

Fiat was next with a tumble of nearly $US1 billion. It’s sibling, Jeep, made up for the Fiat loss and made it into the top 500 list with a ranking of 417 – a jump of 83 places. This was said to have improved its brand value by around $1 billion.

In the rankings table, Land Rover jumped 50 places in the latest survey to rank at 162, Lexus jumped 77 places to rank at 284 and Porsche leapt 82 places to sit at a surprising high rank of 329.

By John Mellor