Conservative activist Robby Starbuck picked his targets carefully in 2024, and the auto and equipment sector took more direct hits than any other. Harley-Davidson, Nissan, Ford, John Deere, and Tractor Supply all faced pressure campaigns within months of each other. Nearly every one of them issued a statement. Almost all of them got a favorable news cycle out of it.
Two years later, the scores tell a different story than the press releases did. Of the seven major automakers we have scored, exactly two actually dismantled the machinery. The rest changed the wording — and one never flinched at all.
Here is every automaker in our database, rated on our six criteria: ESG programs, DEI initiatives, Pride sponsorships, HRC Corporate Equality Index participation, political contributions, and CEO Action for Diversity membership. Browse the full list of non-woke automotive brands for the independent shops and suppliers that never had a DEI department to cancel.
The Two That Actually Quit
Nissan — 10/100
Nissan is the cleanest reversal in the industry. Under pressure in late 2024, it backed out of DEI programs, Pride sponsorships, and HRC Corporate Equality Index participation — the three criteria that carry the most weight in our scoring. It withdrew from Pride sponsorships entirely in 2025 and ended diversity-based hiring practices.
What is left is a sustainability and emissions reporting program, which is why the score is 10 and not zero. ESG reporting alone is a thin residue. Nissan is the only major automaker that gave up ground on every social criterion we track and kept it given up.
Harley-Davidson — 10/100
Starbuck launched his campaign against Harley-Davidson on July 23, 2024, calling on the company to end Pride event sponsorships and LGBTQ ally training. Harley responded that it had not had a DEI department since April 2024, no longer used hiring quotas or supplier diversity spending goals, and would stop participating in the HRC Corporate Equality Index.
That is not a rewording. That is the actual apparatus, removed. Boardroom turmoil followed, and CEO Jochen Zeitz announced his departure in the aftermath. Harley retains a net-zero sustainability commitment, which accounts for its remaining 10 points. For a company that spent years as the right's favorite example of a heritage brand losing the plot, the 2026 score is a genuine turnaround.
The Outlier: Tesla — 20/100
Tesla scores low, but not for the reasons its fans assume. It dismantled its own DEI and LGBTQ programs under Elon Musk beginning in 2023, after years of leading the sector on both. It now has no active Pride sponsorships, no confirmed CEI rating, no DEI programs, and its CEO is not a CEO Action for Diversity signatory.
The 20 points come from two places: an aggressive ESG and sustainability program that is central to the entire product, and employee political contributions that still lean heavily Democratic. Tesla is proof that our score measures a corporate record, not a CEO's posting habits.
The Four Still Carrying a Woke Record
General Motors — 62/100
GM is the textbook case of going dark rather than going back. Its 2024 annual report told investors the company was committed to fostering a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion. Its February 2025 report, as NPR first reported, does not mention diversity once.
Deleting the word is not deleting the program. GM's underlying record — funding for GLSEN's Rainbow Library out of a larger commitment to inclusivity nonprofits, early same-sex partner benefits, a $10 million racial justice pledge, and a long-running corporate DE&I operation — is what earns the 62. Analysts have noted GM's extensive federal contracting, including State Department work, as a plausible motive for the quiet scrub.
Ford — 66/100
Ford is the most misread brand on this list, so be precise about it. On August 28, 2024, a memo from CEO Jim Farley — approved by Chairman Bill Ford — told employees the company would stop participating in the HRC Corporate Equality Index and other best-places-to-work rankings, would drop quotas for minority dealers and suppliers, would open employee resource groups to all employees, and would comment less on polarizing issues.
Those are real changes, and Ford deserves credit for them. So why 66? Because the CEI is one criterion out of six. Ford's ESG architecture, its political contribution profile, its historic Pride advertising, and its broader DEI infrastructure did not move with the announcement. A company can quit the scoreboard without quitting the game. Ford quit the scoreboard.
Stellantis — 70/100
Stellantis — the parent of Jeep, Ram, Dodge, and Chrysler — is the moderate case. Its legacy DEI program remains live but has been reframed around meritocracy language, and Jeep visibly showed up at Motor City Pride in June 2025 while rival automakers were retreating. FCA US earned a perfect CEI 100 eleven times before the merger, though its current CEI participation is unverified.
Notably, Stellantis is not a conservative boycott target. Its 2024 and 2025 headlines were financial collapse and the Tavares ouster, not culture war. Its PAC leans slightly Democratic. It scores 70 on the strength of a record it has quietly maintained while nobody was aiming at it.
Subaru — 80/100
Subaru is the highest-scoring automaker we track, and the only one that never pretended otherwise. It holds a perfect 100/100 HRC Corporate Equality Index score, runs an active DEIB council, and has spent more than three decades on LGBTQ-targeted marketing — it was one of the first automakers to include LGBTQ employees in its non-discrimination policies. Its political contributions lean Democratic.
It is also still selling a Pride collection in 2026, while most of the industry quietly folded theirs. Whatever else you think of Subaru, it is not pretending. The 80/100 is an honest number for an honest position.
Why a Rollback Doesn't Always Move the Score
The gap between Harley at 10 and Ford at 66 is the whole lesson. Both companies announced DEI changes in August 2024. Both were praised in the same news cycle. Only one of them took the apparatus apart.
Corporate America learned in 2025 and 2026 that the cheapest way to survive a boycott is to stop publishing, not to stop spending. The proof is in the HRC's own numbers: Fortune 500 participation in the Corporate Equality Index collapsed from 377 companies in 2025 to just 131 in 2026 — a 65% drop in a single year. The number of companies earning a perfect 100 fell from 765 to 534. The HRC itself has argued the retreat is about transparency, not inclusion — companies stopped reporting, not stopped doing.
That is exactly why we score the ten-year record instead of the quarter's press release. A brand that deletes a webpage has changed a webpage.
What This Means at the Dealership
If your standard is a company that actually dismantled its DEI and Pride operations and has kept them dismantled, the list is short: Nissan at 10/100 and Harley-Davidson at 10/100 for two wheels. Toyota also rolled back its DEI programs and some external LGBTQ event sponsorships in late 2024; our profile on it is still in review, so we are not assigning it a public score yet.
If you are comparing the Detroit three, GM at 62 edges out Ford at 66 and Stellantis at 70 — but all three sit in woke territory, and the spread between them is narrower than any of their marketing departments would like you to believe.
And if you want the brand that told you exactly who it was for thirty years without a single walk-back, that is Subaru at 80/100. Full ratings for every scored company are in our automotive brand directory.