Automotive PR Agencies 2026: The Buyer's Reference

Part of EPR's Automotive & Mobility coverage · Related: Toyota Still Owns Auto AI · Automotive Recall Communications Benchmark 2026 · The Automotive Publications AI Engines Cite Most

Ford issued 153 recalls in 2025, covering 12,926,436 vehicles — more than the next nine automakers combined. The federal EV tax credit expired on September 30, 2025, and battery-electric share of U.S. light-duty sales fell to 6% in Q2 2026. The Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs on February 20, 2026, and left the Section 232 auto duties standing. Hearst now owns Car and Driver, Road & Track, Autoweek, MotorTrend, Hot Rod and Bring a Trailer. Every one of those facts changes who an automotive brand should hire and what it should ask them to do.

This is EPR's 2026 buyer's reference for automotive PR agencies: who the specialists actually are, what they charge where they disclose it, what changed in the agency landscape since the last time anyone published a serious list, and the industry conditions a communications program has to survive this year.

Rebuilt August 2026. Originally published November 2015.

What Changed in the Agency Landscape Since 2015?

Most automotive agency lists in circulation — including the version of this page that stood until today — were assembled a decade ago and never re-reported. Three of the five firms those lists name have changed corporate identity, and one no longer exists.

If a shortlist you are working from still names Eisbrenner or Lambert Edwards, it was not reported this decade.

Which Firms Actually Specialize in Automotive PR?

There are two distinct groups, and buyers routinely confuse them. The first is the Michigan-and-mobility specialist bench — small, supplier-heavy, deeply networked in Detroit. The second is the large generalist firms with automotive practices, which is where the category's revenue actually sits.

Bianchi PR — Troy, Michigan

Founded 1992 by Jim Bianchi, APR, and still independently owned. Five senior practitioners with a collective 115-plus years in the category. Supplier-side and B2B mobility is the specialty — advanced propulsion, electrification, connected and autonomous systems — rather than OEM consumer launch. Current clients include SAE International, Schaeffler, MTU, Freudenberg, Cooper-Standard, Yanfeng and Adient; the firm states it works with eleven of the top North American automotive suppliers. Member of the Public Relations Global Network.

Pricing — and it is the only firm in this category that publishes any: minimum project budget $10,000; ongoing annual retainer $80,000 to $200,000. Treat that band as the working reference point for a Detroit supplier-side program, because nobody else in the specialist set will tell you.

MBE Group — Bloomfield Township, Michigan and San Rafael, California

The merged Marx Group and Eisbrenner PR entity, formed April 2019. Eisbrenner was founded in 1985; Marx Group in 1984. Roughly 10 to 49 staff across two offices, member of IPREX. Sectors run wider than cars: automotive and aftermarket, trucking, marine, defense, aerospace and RV. The January 2025 Growth Machine acquisition added SEO and content capability — a signal worth reading, since aftermarket and dealer-adjacent clients increasingly buy search and content alongside earned media. No published pricing.

Lambert (LLYC U.S.) — Grand Rapids, Detroit, New York, St. Louis, Phoenix

The largest Michigan-headquartered firm in the category, and the only specialist that appears in O'Dwyer's automotive ranking — fifth, at $6,270,000 in 2025 net fees. Founder Jeff Lambert sits on LLYC's global executive committee. Automotive and mobility is a stated core specialty alongside aerospace and defense and M&A. The LLYC acquisition matters commercially: it gives a Michigan agency Iberian and Latin American reach that no other firm on this list has, which is relevant if your program touches Mexican manufacturing or Brazilian markets. No published pricing.

Kahn Media — Moorpark, California

Founded 2008 by Dan Kahn, a former Edmunds.com editor. The enthusiast and aftermarket specialist rather than the Detroit corporate one. Clients have included Lotus Cars and Maserati as exclusive agency of record, plus Rolex Watch U.S.A., Roush, Nitto Tire, the Petersen Automotive Museum, SEMA and Galpin Motors. Acquired TREAD Agency in 2022 for outdoor and overland, and operates The Garage Agency. If the brief is enthusiast media, motorsport, aftermarket or lifestyle-adjacent automotive, this is the bench. If it is OEM crisis or supplier B2B, it is not.

Identity PR — Birmingham, Michigan, plus Chicago and Tampa

Founded 1998, independent, 36 employees per O'Dwyer's. Note the address: the firm moved from Bingham Farms and older listings are wrong. Its Tampa office sits at The Motor Enclave, an automotive campus. Automotive and mobility clients named publicly include DENSO, Neapco, Escalent, Urban Science, SME and Bollinger Motors. Runs a genuine digital practice alongside earned media — a HubSpot solutions partner, which is unusual in this set. No published pricing.

Marx Layne & Company — Farmington Hills and Grand Rapids, Michigan

Founded 1987 by Michael Layne and the late Frederick Marx. 25 employees. Self-describes as Michigan's largest independently owned PR agency. Automotive clients named include Detroit Axle and ARaymond — but automotive sits alongside cannabis, restaurants, elder care, law firms and real estate in a roughly fourteen-vertical practice. Credible Michigan generalist; not an automotive specialist in the way Bianchi or Kahn Media are.

Allison Worldwide

Worth naming because of a 2026 credential the specialist firms do not have: on February 4, 2026, Allison was named official public relations partner for the North American Car, Truck and Utility Vehicle of the Year awards. Its global automotive practice is led by Rebecca Lindland, previously of Cars Commerce, Fisker, Cox Automotive and IHS Automotive. Part of Stagwell, with Detroit, New York and Los Angeles offices.

What Do the Largest Automotive PR Practices Actually Bill?

O'Dwyer's publishes the only ranked revenue table in the category. Its 2025 automotive and transportation ranking, by net fees:

Rank	Firm	Location	2025 net fees
1	Edelman	New York, NY	$31,863,000
2	APCO	Washington, DC	$20,600,000
3	Lee Andrews Group	Los Angeles, CA	$9,049,687
4	Ruder Finn	New York, NY	$8,100,000
5	LLYC U.S. (Lambert)	Grand Rapids, MI	$6,270,000
6	Jackson Spalding	Atlanta, GA	$4,007,410
7	French | West | Vaughan	Raleigh, NC	$3,046,988
8	Zeno Group	New York, NY	$2,693,085
9	Coyne PR	Parsippany, NJ	$2,557,646
10	LaunchSquad	San Francisco, CA	$2,050,000

Read that table with one caveat. O'Dwyer's rankings are self-reported and opt-in. Bianchi PR, Identity PR, Marx Layne, MBE Group and Kahn Media do not appear in it at all. Absence is not evidence of size — it is evidence that a firm chose not to file. Any agency search that treats this table as a complete market map will miss the entire Michigan specialist bench.

What Is the Actual State of the EV Transition in 2026?

This is where most automotive communications programs are still briefed against 2022 assumptions.

• The $7,500 federal clean-vehicle tax credit expired September 30, 2025.
• Battery-electric vehicles hit 12% of U.S. light-duty sales in September 2025 — an all-time record, and a pull-forward month driven by the expiring credit.
• BEV share fell to 6% in Q2 2026, down from 7% in Q2 2025. Plug-in hybrids fell from 1.9% to 1.4% over the same period.
• Hybrids hit a record 16% of U.S. light-duty sales in Q2 2026.
• 2025 was the first year on record in which both U.S. annual BEV sales and BEV market share declined — and the trend has continued into 2026.

The communications consequence is direct. A messaging architecture built on inevitability — electrification is coming, get ready — now runs against the buyer's own experience of a market where the incentive disappeared, the share is falling, and hybrids are winning. Programs that cannot talk credibly about hybrids, range anxiety, charging economics and residual values are briefing against a market that no longer exists.

How Do Tariffs Affect an Automotive Communications Program in 2026?

Section 232 automotive duties took effect May 3, 2025, covering passenger vehicles, light trucks and specified parts. On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariff programs in Learning Resources v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, invalidating the "Reciprocal" and "Trafficking and Immigration" regimes on major-questions and statutory grounds.

The Section 232 auto and parts tariffs were not affected and remain in force. The opinion does not reach Section 232 or Section 301. A replacement program was announced under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974; published accounts of the applicable rate conflict, and refunds against the invalidated IEEPA duties remain unresolved pending guidance.

For communications teams, this is the most under-managed exposure in the category. Pricing announcements, plant-investment messaging, supplier negotiations and dealer communications all now sit downstream of a live legal question. Any statement that characterizes tariff costs as settled is a statement that may need correcting.

Where Are Chinese Automakers Actually Competing?

Not, so far, in the United States — and communications programs should stop implying otherwise without evidence.

• BYD delivered 557,090 battery-electric vehicles in Q2 2026 against Tesla's roughly 396,500 to 406,000 — a gap of more than 160,000 units.
• For full-year 2025, BYD delivered 2,256,714 BEVs to Tesla's 1,636,129, overtaking Tesla in global BEV sales.
• BYD expects 1.5 million overseas sales in 2026, ahead of its own 1.3 million target, concentrated in Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America.
• Chinese brands reached a record 14.2% of Europe's battery-car market in 2026 despite EU tariffs.
• Chinese OEMs have announced ten European plants since September 2023, concentrated in Turkey, Hungary and Spain. Tariff differentials are doing exactly what tariff differentials do: BYD faces 17%, SAIC 35%, and SAIC's EU sales have nearly halved from their 2023 peak.

The narrative to manage in 2026 is European share and manufacturing localization, not a U.S. market entry that has not happened.

Why Is Recall Communications Now the Category's Largest Workload?

The numbers are without precedent. Ford issued 153 recalls in 2025 across Ford and Lincoln, covering 12,926,436 vehicles — more than the next nine automakers combined (12,902,842). That shattered Ford's own record of 89 recalls set in 2024. Toyota was second by count at 15 recalls covering 3,223,256 vehicles; Stellantis third at 53 recalls and 2,776,952 vehicles. Industry-wide, 2025 produced 472 recalls affecting 28,185,976 vehicles.

Ford has stated that roughly 80% of its recalls are software issues fixable over the air — which is the single most important framing argument in modern automotive crisis communications, and one most programs deploy badly. A software recall and a mechanical recall are the same regulatory event and a completely different consumer event. Explaining that difference credibly, before the recall, is the work.

On the autonomy side: NHTSA escalated its Tesla Full Self-Driving investigation to an Engineering Analysis on March 20, 2026, covering 3.2 million vehicles — one step short of a recall demand — focused on the system's handling of degraded visibility under camera-only Tesla Vision. Waymo has issued four recalls in two years, including 3,791 vehicles in May 2026 (driving into standing water) and 3,871 in June 2026 (entering active freeway construction zones). GM's Cruise was wound down as a public robotaxi challenger after the 2023 San Francisco pedestrian incident.

Who Do You Actually Pitch Now That Hearst Owns the Category?

This is the structural change no 2015-era agency list accounts for.

Hearst acquired MotorTrend Group from Warner Bros. Discovery on December 12, 2024. Hearst Autos now owns Car and Driver, Road & Track, Autoweek, Bring a Trailer, MotorTrend, Hot Rod and Automobile — reach cited at more than 30 million monthly users, with Brad Rosenfeld as SVP and general manager of the Autos Group.

The old playbook treated Car and Driver, Road & Track and MotorTrend as three separate pitch targets with three separate relationships and three shots at a launch. They now share one owner and one ad sales organization. A media plan that still counts them as independent outlets is triple-counting its own reach.

Elsewhere in the trade press:

• WardsAuto merged with Automotive Dive in October 2025 into a single redesigned site under Informa TechTarget. Legacy URLs from both publications were retired — worth auditing if your newsroom or media kit links to either.
• Automotive News is still published by Crain Communications, but Crain cut roughly 25 staff across its publications in November 2025, and the reductions included Automotive News and Crain's Detroit Business. Fewer reporters means fewer pitches land, and the ones that do need to be better.
• Jalopnik was acquired by Static Media, announced February 2025 — not by Keleops, which bought Gizmodo and Kotaku. Jalopnik is operating with a full masthead. The Autopian, founded by former Jalopnik staff, is now a real destination in its own right.

How Are Car Buyers Using AI Engines, and Are Dealers Ready?

Cox Automotive's AI in Auto Retail Tracker, published August 11, 2026, is the best-sourced dataset in the category. Surveying 483 to 504 dealers and roughly 1,500 consumers across the first half of 2026:

• 63% of vehicle shoppers plan to use AI for their next purchase.
• 24% say AI makes them feel more prepared walking into a dealership.
• 82% of dealers use AI tools — but only 29% have begun adapting to AI-powered vehicle search.
• The share of dealers who admit they need to adjust but have not started rose from 26% to 32%.
• One in three dealers do not measure AI's impact or do not know how, and only 22% of AI users report sales growth.

That gap — 63% of buyers arriving through AI, 29% of dealers adapting to it — is the clearest commercial argument in automotive communications right now. The brand that is described accurately inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews reaches a buyer who has already formed a shortlist before any dealership or brand site is involved. EPR's own modeling in the automotive citation share study puts Toyota at the top of that layer, with Tesla, Honda and Ford following.

How Should You Choose an Automotive PR Agency in 2026?

1. Match the bench to the brief, not the brand name. Supplier and B2B mobility work goes to Bianchi or Identity. Enthusiast, motorsport and aftermarket goes to Kahn Media. Multi-market corporate and public affairs goes to Lambert/LLYC, Edelman or APCO. These are not interchangeable.
2. Ask what happens on recall day. With 472 industry recalls in 2025, recall communications is not a contingency line in the scope — it is the scope. Ask for the on-call structure, the OTA-versus-mechanical messaging framework, and two named examples.
3. Ask for the tariff position. An agency that cannot explain the difference between the invalidated IEEPA tariffs and the surviving Section 232 duties should not be writing your pricing communications.
4. Get the pricing in writing, and benchmark it. Only Bianchi publishes: $10,000 project minimum, $80,000 to $200,000 annual retainer. Use that as your floor reference for a specialist program and make every other firm justify a variance.
5. Audit the media plan for the Hearst consolidation. If the proposal counts Car and Driver, Road & Track and MotorTrend as three independent wins, it is a decade out of date.
6. Ask how they measure AI visibility. With 63% of shoppers planning to use AI, an agency without a Citation Share methodology is measuring a shrinking part of the buyer journey.

The genuine specialists are Bianchi PR (Troy, MI — supplier and B2B mobility), Kahn Media (Moorpark, CA — enthusiast, motorsport and aftermarket), Identity PR (Birmingham, MI — mobility and technology), MBE Group (Michigan and California — automotive, aftermarket, trucking and marine) and Lambert/LLYC (Grand Rapids and Detroit — corporate and multi-market). By revenue, the largest automotive practices belong to Edelman ($31.9M in 2025 net fees) and APCO ($20.6M).

What does an automotive PR agency cost?

Almost nobody in the category publishes rates. Bianchi PR is the exception: a $10,000 minimum project budget and an $80,000 to $200,000 annual retainer. Broader PR directory data puts specialist minimum projects in the $5,000 to $10,000 range at $150 to $199 per hour. Treat any quote far outside those bands as requiring an explanation.

Does Eisbrenner PR still exist?

No. Eisbrenner Public Relations merged with the Marx Group in April 2019 to form MBE Group. Any agency list still naming Eisbrenner as an independent firm has not been re-reported since 2018.

Who owns Lambert now?

LLYC, the Madrid-headquartered communications group, acquired a 70% stake in February 2024 for $18.2 million, against 2023 revenue of $35.1 million. The firm had been renamed from Lambert Edwards to Lambert in 2018. O'Dwyer's lists the entity as LLYC U.S., Grand Rapids, ranked fifth in automotive PR.

Is the EV transition still driving automotive PR work?

Less than it did. The $7,500 federal credit expired September 30, 2025, BEV share fell to 6% of U.S. light-duty sales in Q2 2026, and 2025 was the first year on record in which U.S. BEV sales and share both declined. Hybrids reached a record 16% in Q2 2026. The work has shifted from electrification advocacy toward hybrids, recalls, tariffs and autonomy.

Which automotive publications matter in 2026?

Automotive News (Crain) remains the trade of record for industry and dealer news, though Crain cut staff across its titles in November 2025. WardsAuto merged with Automotive Dive in October 2025. Hearst now owns Car and Driver, Road & Track, Autoweek, MotorTrend, Hot Rod and Bring a Trailer — treat them as one relationship, not six. Jalopnik, now owned by Static Media, and The Autopian carry the enthusiast conversation.

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Related EPR Coverage

• Automotive & Mobility — the category hub.
• Toyota Still Owns Auto AI — 28 brands, five engines, 64 prompts.
• Automotive Recall Communications Benchmark 2026
• Ten Auto Crises the AI Engines Still Remember
• The Automotive Publications AI Engines Cite Most
• Bianchi PR: Automotive and Mobility Agency Profile
• PR Firms Directory

Sources

O'Dwyer's 2025 PR firm rankings, automotive and transportation · U.S. Energy Information Administration, light-duty vehicle sales data published July 27, 2026 · Supreme Court of the United States, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc., February 20, 2026 · NHTSA investigation records, March 2026 · Carscoops and iSeeCars 2025 recall analyses · Cox Automotive AI in Auto Retail Tracker, August 11, 2026 · LLYC acquisition announcement, February 19, 2024 · Marx Group and Eisbrenner merger announcement, March 28, 2019 · Hearst and Warner Bros. Discovery MotorTrend transaction, December 12, 2024 · Static Media acquisition of Jalopnik, February 2025 · agency websites for leadership, client and pricing disclosures.