Tweet [1]
This post [2] has created some interesting discussion in the comments. Here’s some more grist for your mills. There is no date on this article [3] from Edmunds.com, but it’s a reaction to the 2007 Chicago Auto Show so the data is presumably fairly recent.
Chrysler’s retro PT Cruiser [4]
may recall American cars of the prewar era, but it’s produced at a
Chrysler plant in Toluca, Mexico. And according to the National Highway
Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), only 35 percent of the PT
Cruiser’s content is sourced in the U.S. or Canada. The "American" Ford Fusion [5] contains just 30-percent U.S./Canadian content, whereas the competing "Japanese" Honda Accord [6] contains 70 percent, Nissan Altima 65 percent and Toyota Camry [7] 80 percent.
Conversely, the all-new Toyota Tundra [8]
(engineered in the U.S. and produced at Toyota’s newest manufacturing
facility in San Antonio, Texas) is as wholly American as any Japanese
vehicle has been to date. In conjunction with the Tundra’s rollout is
an intensified marketing campaign to paint Toyota as a wholly American
company. The campaign includes macho TV ads whose gruff-voiced narrator
sounds as if he just walked off the cattle farm. And it’s reinforced by
Toyota dealers throughout the country, including one in North Texas
that hung its Tundra from a crane, draped with a "Made in America"
banner.