Buying an American vehicle is a very sensitive issue for some folks. My Grandparents live in Granville, IL. This is a sleepy town in Middle America where the population is under a thousand, and know one is a stranger. Spotting a foreign car is like finding a needle in a haystack - and believe me there are no shortages of haystacks.
These people are often loyal to one dealership and one salesman, and might buy from the same car manufacturer their entire lives. For instance my Grandparents have been buying Chryslers for the last 25+ years. This is just what they do.
So what happens now when cross-ownership of automakers is becoming the norm? Is is still possible to buy a true American vehicle….
An interesting article on msn.auto provides some insight into the subject.
The article generally tells us that widely dispersed sourcing of parts and global vehicle design and development make it difficult for consumers to know truly how “American” their vehicles are.
The article goes on to say:
Chrysler vehicles today are products of Germany-based Daimler Chrysler, and Ford Motor Co.’s portfolio of vehicles includes English-built Jaguars and Land Rovers as well as Swedish-built Volvos.
Also, foreign-based carmakers such as Honda, Toyota, Nissan, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have opened factories in the United States and build both vehicles and parts—such as engines—on U.S. soil.
Add in the nonstop pressure on automakers to source parts globally as inexpensively and as efficiently as possible, and you can begin to see the complications inherent in any domestic content labeling.
In addition, the domestic content requirement, as it now stands, mixes U.S. and Canadian parts into a single percentage, so there’s no real way to know the U.S.-only content.
Where does this leave us? Well, in short - buying a souly American made car is going to be a challenge. Finding a souly American automaker is likely to be a challenge too. Perhaps in such a global economy we don’t have to be so attached to just buying an “American” vehicle; as the lines of what this actually means has grown thin.
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