Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and General Motors topped the industry in the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition’s 2019 Automotive Diversity Scorecard released this month.
The organization also lauded improvements by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co.
The scorecard judges automakers on their commitment to improving diversity in employment, advertising, marketing, procurement, dealers and philanthropy.
Companies are scored as either green, yellow or red. Green signals that a company is using best practices to build ethnic diversity and has shared its goals, initiatives and investments in this area. Yellow indicates diversity is evident, but not all dollar investments, key figures and other factors were disclosed.
Red means diversity initiatives were nonexistent or undisclosed or that there was not relevant information provided for scoring.
Ford and Toyota had green marks in five of the six categories. Both had yellow ratings for dealerships. Ford ranked third in the industry, with 168 minority-owned dealerships at the end of 2018, while Toyota was fifth, with 74, according to the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers.
GM, the only automaker with a green rating for dealerships, had 278 minority-owned stores, the most in the industry. Overall, GM got four green ratings.
“Toyota and Ford have done very well because both have African American agencies of record, moreover, their procurement spend has been very strong,” John Graves, chairman of the Rainbow/PUSH Automotive Project, said in an email to Automotive News. “Lastly, the commitment in the C-suites has been exceptional.”
FCA, Honda and Nissan “have shown the most improvement by increasing their advertising and procurement spend with African American companies,” Graves said.