{"id":845563,"date":"2025-12-09T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=845563"},"modified":"2025-12-08T16:48:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T14:48:16","slug":"one-top-car-brand-has-a-serious-perception-problem-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/motoring\/845563\/one-top-car-brand-has-a-serious-perception-problem-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"One top car brand has a serious perception problem in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ford, one of the most popular car brands in South Africa, has a much worse media sentiment rating than its main competitors, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Suzuki.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was revealed in Press Pulse\u2019s latest report, which tracked media sentiment across South Africa\u2019s top business and motoring publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ford\u2019s poor media sentiment is not unexpected. Recent developments have raised concerns from owners about safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July 2025, Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa announced a recall campaign that affected more than 5,700 vehicles in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A month later, the company issued another recall campaign affecting over 20,000 vehicles, including the Ranger, EcoSport, and Everest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the issues related to the infotainment screen freezing or turning black, which can cause the rear-view camera image to be frozen, missing, or delayed while reversing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some Ford Ranger models were recalled due to a potential temporary loss of brake boost, requiring increased pedal effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon after the recalls, the company\u2019s South African division announced that it would be retrenching hundreds of workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ford explained that these retrenchments were linked to lower European orders for its Ranger pickup truck, driven by recent tax changes in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media coverage highlighted the concern from trade unions, including Solidarity, and analysts that this move signals structural fragility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another issue which has been haunting the car brand for many years is the Ford Kuga fire crisis, which made headlines a decade ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite happening so long ago, the Ford Kuga problem continues to be found in articles about the company in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These issues compounded to make Ford the only top car brand in South Africa with a negative media sentiment rating over the last three months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chart below shows Press Pulse\u2019s media sentiment ranking for Ford, Toyota, Hyundai, Volkswagen, and Suzuki.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

About Press Pulse<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Press Pulse developed an artificial intelligence (AI) sentiment-measuring system for online media reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The system focuses on South African business reporting from top-tier media publications and measures companies\u2019 success in achieving positive exposure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sentiment ranking is based on the number of positive, neutral, or negative articles and the reach and influence of the publication where they are published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simply put, the more positive articles a company receives, the better its sentiment ranking. The inverse also holds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Online media in South Africa is highly influential, which is why companies invest heavily in public relations and content marketing to get positive exposure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, before Press Pulse\u2019s new sentiment system, it was difficult for companies to track their performance accurately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The good news is that new advances in artificial intelligence have made it possible to measure media sentiment objectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The system uses natural language processing and deep learning for accurate sentiment detection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Press Pulse makes it easy for companies to track their online media sentiment and gain insight into how they can improve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ford, one of the most popular car brands in South Africa, has a much worse media sentiment rating than its main competitors, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Suzuki.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":817793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11119],"tags":[2042,10475,22562,12466,2041,6636],"class_list":["post-845563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-motoring","tag-ford","tag-hyundai","tag-press-pulse","tag-suzuki","tag-toyota","tag-volkswagen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":845567,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845563\/revisions\/845567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}