Toyota Motor Corp. still has the best working relationship with automotive suppliers, but it’s now closely followed by Honda Motor Co., according to an annual survey released Monday.

The ratings of Toyota and Nissan Motor Corp. both dropped significantly, while Chrysler LLC posted its second year of declines to fall to last place in the rankings slightly behind General Motors Corp., according to the survey by Planning Perspectives Inc. of Birmingham, Mich.

Ford Motor Co. was the only automaker to post an improved score, rising 18 percent, partially because of significant improvement in the area of supplier trust, but the Dearborn, Mich.-based company still ranked far behind Toyota and Honda.

“In the years we’ve been conducting this study, we’ve never seen such dramatic year-over-year shifts in the rankings of the six domestic and foreign domestic automakers,” John W. Henke Jr., president and chief executive of Planning Perspectives, said in a statement. “This could signal a new chapter in OEM supplier relations going forward.”

Tony Brown, Ford’s group vice president for global purchasing, said improving relationships with suppliers has been a priority for the automaker for a long time.

“We are encouraged with this progress, but we know we have a long way to go,” Brown said in a statement released by Ford. “We are not letting up in our efforts to become the preferred manufacturer for our suppliers.”

Automakers rely on parts suppliers to meet quality standards, provide new technology and make investments to fulfill supply contracts.

A total of 284 top-tier parts suppliers returned surveys for the study, which ranks the automakers based on degree of trust, open and honest communication, amount of help given to suppliers to reduce costs, and supplier profit opportunities, Planning Perspectives said.

Toyota scored 367, down from 415 last year, while Honda fell to 359 from a score of 380, and Nissan fell to 253 from 289.

The U.S.-based automakers occupied the bottom three spots. Ford rose to a score of 191 from 162, while GM fell to 163 from 174. Chrysler tumbled to 161 from 199.

TRAVERSE CITY — A senior Toyota Motor Corp. executive told The Detroit News today that the failure of one of Detroit’s Big Three automakers would be devastating for his company.

“We want everyone to succeed,” said Steve St. Angelo, head of Toyota’s Kentucky assembly plant and senior vice president in charge of engineering and manufacturing for North America. “Competition is good for us. The customers are the big winners, because it makes all of us better.”

He added that Toyota depends on many of the same companies that provide parts to General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC.

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“We share many of the same suppliers, so if one of our suppliers has difficulty with either Chrysler, GM or Ford, there’s a good chance they are going to have difficulty for us,” he said.

And, St. Angelo said, the entire economy benefits from a strong domestic auto industry.

“When GM, Ford, Chrysler and Toyota are healthy, the economy is stable and it’s the best for all of us,” he said.

Japan’s largest automaker has passed Ford to become the second biggest car company in the United States and is challenging GM to become first in the world.

But St. Angelo said Toyota is doing what it can within the constraints of U.S. anti-trust rules to help its U.S. rivals.

“When any of our competitors want to come to our plants, we let them,” he said. “We really don’t want anybody to go bankrupt.”

In recent months, many on Wall Street have openly worried that could be the fate of both Chrysler and GM.

But they, along with Ford, have taken unprecedented steps to turn their U.S. operations around.

“If you really look at the leaders of the Detroit Three, they’re some of the finest leaders that this business has ever had,” St. Angelo said. “I hope and I think that they’ll come out of this. It would help our company. It would help America. It would help our suppliers. It would help everyone.”