As an investor, it doesn't pay to follow the crowd.

In this series, though, we highlight a possible exception -- the collective wisdom of our CAPS community. Read the next section if you're unfamiliar with our methodology. Skip it if you want to go straight to the results.

Why this crowd is different
Jumping into a stock because your rich neighbor did, or because you heard about it from your friend's uncle who used to work on Wall Street, or because CNBC has been talking about it nonstop is a recipe for disaster.

If there's one thing I've learned as a stock analyst, it's that any stock can be gussied up to sound like a world-beater. If there's a second thing I've learned, it's that being a smart person doesn't make you a good investor.

In the hands of a smart person with good communication skills, the never-were and never-will-be stocks sound like tickets to instant fortune. The ancient Greek philosophers made the distinction between rhetoric and knowledge. The former is convincing; the latter is true.

That's why we factor in track record in our Motley Fool CAPS community. We invite everyone to give stocks an outperform (akin to a buy rating) or underperform rating (akin to a sell rating) in CAPS. We then use those opinions to calculate a rating for each stock -- from one to five stars (five being the best). But -- and this is a big distinction -- we give more weight to the opinions of folks whose picks have performed well in the past.

The most hated stocks in the automotive industry
So, with that methodology as prelude, I present to you every one- and two-star automotive stock with a market capitalization more than $100 million and 50 or more underperform ratings. Remember, stocks are rated on a five-star scale by our CAPS community, so one- and two-star stocks are consensus underperforms. The stocks are listed in order of number of underperform picks.

 Company Name

 Market Capitalization (in millions)

52-Week Price Change %

Price-to-Earnings (TTM)

CAPS Rating (out of 5)

Underperform Picks

Harley-Davidson (NYSE: HOG)

$5,937

14%

NM

**

422

Tesla Motors (Nasdaq: TSLA)

$1,778              

N/A

NM

*

249

Winnebago (NYSE: WGO)

$254               

(25%)

NM

*

144

American Axle & Manufacturing (NYSE: AXL)

$632              

39%

4.6

*

137

Tenneco (NYSE: TEN)

$1,554              

52%

25.2

*

91

Wabash National (NYSE: WNC)

 $392               

215%

NM

*

76

ArvinMeritor (NYSE: ARM)

$1,300              

61%

NM

*

64

Dana Holding

$1,534              

91%

NM

**

58

TRW Automotive Holdings

$4,366              

87%

7.0

**

58

Marine Products

$217              

8%

NM

*

54

Source: Motley Fool CAPS.

Seven of the 10 companies above don't have a trailing P/E ratio -- in other words, they had negative earnings. Although many have seen stock price gains over the past year, the CAPS community is expressing doubts that they can turn their operations around.

More CAPS members think Harley-Davidson is a sell than any other automotive stock. Do you think it deserves this lack of love? Make your thoughts known in CAPS by clicking here. Or just go there to do further research on one of these popular stocks.

You can also see which automotive stocks are rated the top buys by clicking here.