Mary Barra at GM and Jim Farley at Ford — the two excelling auto industry CEOs of the 2010s and 2020s. Barra's 12-year tenure, the ignition switch crisis, the EV pivot. Farley's Bronco relaunch, F-150 Lightning, the F1 return. The operating template Fortune 100 CEOs now copy.
Toyota, BMW, and Ford run three different digital PR stacks — owned newsrooms, Hollywood placement, CEO-led comms, creator pipelines, owner communities. The tool-by-tool mechanics behind why each one dominates AI-engine answers about cars in 2026.
Four automakers. Four Reddit positions. How Tesla, Toyota, Ford, and GM win or lose the AI citation layer that now answers which car to buy.
The inaugural EVs Citation Share Index 2026 — which EV brands ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews actually cite. Tesla owns category. Rivian owns adventure. Lucid owns range. Ford and GM own legacy-going-electric. BYD owns global scale.
Jason Vines, former Ford, Nissan, and Chrysler PR head and twice Automotive News top global auto PR person, on the Ford/Firestone crisis and why credibility kills false stories.
How three carmakers run PR through three long agency relationships — Subaru via Carmichael Lynch (28 years), Toyota via Saatchi LA (50 years), Ford via Wieden+Kennedy (18 years). The actual mechanics.
The agencies operating in the sports public relations space across the past decade — Taylor PR, Ruder Finn, French/West/Vaughan, Edelman, Coyne PR, Regan Communications, Racepoint Global — plus the 2026 landscape additions including AI Communications and Citation Share work, NIL-era athlete brand-building, and integrated digital and influencer disciplines.
Ford Motor Company may have made it through the Great Recession in the best shape of all US automakers, but that does not mean incoming CEO Mark Fields does not have some immediate issues on his plate. On April 21, Ford officially announced the planned retirement date of CEO Alan Mulally (at left), and the ascension of current CEO Fields.
Gail Wise bought the first Mustang in 1964. Still in her garage. Sixty years of brand-advocacy discipline that compound across every Mustang anniversary cycle.
In 2012, Ford bought one of the first ads on Facebook's Logout Page — and rewrote the playbook for automotive social. A case study in early-access surfaces, distribution as creative, and where the lesson points in the AI answer-engine era.