About WardsAuto

WardsAuto

Overview

WardsAuto is a Southfield, Michigan-based automotive news and intelligence service owned by Informa. It describes itself as a world-leading provider of automotive insights and analysis, having served the industry's information needs for more than 90 years. The company provides a forward-looking perspective on all aspects of the automotive business, from the tech centre to the plant floor to the showroom. Its services include the premium wardsintelligence.com resource and suite of customisable data reporting tools, the Wards Intelligence Outlook and Focus conferences, digital newsletters and magazines, and the wardsauto.com website. WardsAuto is best known to the general public for the Wards 10 Best Engines awards — renamed the Wards 10 Best Engines & Propulsion Systems for the 2020 competition — an annual list of the ten best automobile engines and propulsion systems available in the United States, selected by WardsAuto editors and presented since the 1995 model year.

Origins: Cram's Report, 1924

WardsAuto's history begins not with a man named Ward but with a publication called Cram's Report. Founded in 1924, Cram's focused on providing stock market information covering the roughly 700 automakers then in existence in the United States — a reminder of how fragmented the early American auto industry was. The October 1929 stock market crash nearly killed the publication along with so many other businesses of the era. Cram's survived thanks to Al Ward and others, who pivoted the business from stock market information to the gathering of automotive statistics. The pivot required ingenuity: the auto companies refused to supply production numbers, so Al Ward and his reporters began stopping workers as they left the assembly plants at the end of the day, asking them how many cars they had built. From that shoe-leather reporting grew the statistical operation that remains the core of WardsAuto's industry coverage today.

Alfred H. Ward

The company carries the name of Alfred H. Ward, an Englishman who settled in Detroit and was with the company from its 1924 start-up until 1964; he died in 1968. Ward owned the company from 1935 until 1957. He first put his name on a publication in 1935, when he launched Ward's Automotive Reports as the successor to Cram's Report. In 1938 he added Ward's Automotive Yearbook, a hardback publication featuring annual news and statistical reviews. Both the reports and the yearbook were built around automotive statistics and news — the foundation of the business that would become WardsAuto. Ward's long stewardship, from the Depression through the post-war boom, established the company's identity as the industry's statistical authority: the source that knew, better than anyone else, how many vehicles were being built, by whom, and where.

The Statistical Core

Automotive statistics remain the heart of WardsAuto's offering. The company's data operation tracks vehicle production, sales, inventories and specifications across the North American and global markets, and its figures are among the most cited in the industry. The premium wardsintelligence.com resource and its suite of customisable data reporting tools give subscribers — automakers, suppliers, dealers, analysts and financial institutions — the ability to interrogate production and sales data at a granular level. The statistical franchise that began with reporters questioning plant workers at factory gates in the 1930s has evolved into a digital data business, but its purpose is unchanged: to give the industry an authoritative, independent account of what is being built and sold.

Ward's Automotive Reports and the Yearbook

Ward's Automotive Reports, launched in 1935, and Ward's Automotive Yearbook, launched in 1938, were the twin pillars of the Ward's publishing business for decades. The reports provided ongoing statistical and news coverage of the industry, while the yearbook offered an annual hardback review of the year's news and numbers — a reference volume for executives, analysts and libraries. Together they made Ward's the indispensable reference for anyone who needed to understand the scale and structure of the American automobile business. The yearbook tradition continued into the modern era, and the brand equity of the Ward's name — synonymous with automotive data — underpins the company's identity to this day.

The 10 Best Engines Awards

WardsAuto's most famous product is the Wards 10 Best Engines competition, an annual list of the ten best automobile engines available in the United States market, selected by WardsAuto editors. The list was started in 1994 for the 1995 model year and has been published every year since, with winners announced at the end of the preceding year. To be eligible, engines must be available in regular-production vehicles on sale in the United States no later than the first quarter of the year. During a two-month testing period, Wards editors evaluate each engine in everyday driving situations around metro Detroit — there is no instrumented testing. The selection takes into account power and torque output; noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) levels; technical relevance; and comparative specifications, with each engine competing against all others. The competition was created by Bill Visnic, the former technical editor at WardsAuto. For the 2020 competition, the name was changed to Wards 10 Best Engines & Propulsion Systems to reflect the growing diversity of powertrains, including hybrids and full electrics — the first electrified powertrain to make the list was the Toyota Prius hybrid-electric system in 2001, and by the late 2010s electrified powertrains accounted for 40 percent of the winners. The 25th anniversary of the awards was celebrated in 2019 with a private reception recognising past winners from every automaker.

Conferences and Events

Beyond publishing and data, WardsAuto convenes the industry through its conferences. The Wards Intelligence Outlook and Focus conferences bring together automakers, suppliers, technology companies and analysts to discuss the forces reshaping the business — from electrification and software-defined vehicles to manufacturing strategy and the economics of the supply chain. The events extend the company's editorial franchise into live discussion, giving subscribers and industry participants a forum for the forward-looking analysis that the brand promises. The awards ceremonies associated with the 10 Best Engines & Propulsion Systems competition — historically presented in conjunction with the Detroit auto show — are among the industry's most watched honours.

Digital Products and Newsletters

The modern WardsAuto operation centres on wardsauto.com, a digital news service covering vehicle technology, engineering, product development, manufacturing and industry trends, supported by a portfolio of digital newsletters and magazines. The site's reporting spans the tech centre — where vehicles are designed and engineered — to the plant floor and the showroom, reflecting the full scope of the automotive value chain. The combination of daily news, the wardsintelligence.com data resource, newsletters and events gives the company a multi-platform presence serving engineers, product planners, manufacturing executives, dealers and analysts.

Ownership by Informa

WardsAuto is a business of Informa, the London-based international exhibitions, business intelligence and academic publishing group. Informa's ownership places WardsAuto within one of the world's largest B2B information companies, alongside a portfolio of brands serving specialist professional communities across industries. The Informa era has seen WardsAuto continue to invest in its data and digital products — the wardsintelligence.com platform, the Outlook and Focus conferences, and the digital news operation — while maintaining the statistical and editorial franchises, from the yearbook tradition to the 10 Best Engines awards, that have defined the brand for the better part of a century.

A Century of Automotive Intelligence

From Cram's Report in 1924 to the present day, WardsAuto has chronicled the American automobile industry for more than a century — through the Depression that nearly killed it, the post-war boom, the oil shocks, the rise of imports, the bankruptcies of 2009 and the current transformation toward electrification and autonomy. Few trade publications can claim such continuity, and fewer still can claim to have invented the statistical infrastructure of their industry: the production and sales figures that WardsAuto pioneered, beginning with reporters questioning workers at factory gates, became the industry's standard measures. For automakers, suppliers, dealers and analysts, WardsAuto remains the authoritative source for what the industry builds, sells and invents — and its 10 Best Engines & Propulsion Systems awards remain the most coveted powertrain honours in the American market. The official website is wardsauto.com.