Daily Auto News Toyota Camry: The Most American Car?
Daily Auto News
If you want to buy American, you should head down to your local Ford, GM or Chrysler dealer, right? Not so fast, Uncle Sam. Cars.com has released its annual American-Made index — and the results may surprise you.
Kicking Tires (the blog for Cars.com) explains: “For the past few years we’ve been ranking cars and trucks built and bought in the U.S. for Cars.com’s American-Made Index. This index, which takes into account a vehicle’s parts content and overall sales, has changed radically over the last two years, and again for 2010, we’ve seen some huge changes.”
Autoblog writes, “First and foremost, the Toyota Camry is (somewhat ironically) still at the top of the American Made Index. But second place is a bit of a surprise, with the Honda Accord making a debut appearance in the runner-up position. Notably, it takes the place of the Ford F-150, which falls off the list entirely.”
Why have the F-150 and other domestic pickups fallen off the list? “So many parts for Detroit maker’s pickup trucks are made overseas that they hardly can be considered all-American vehicles,” writes USA Today.
PickupTrucks.com reports, “As recently as the 2007 model year, the Silverado 1500 and its GMC Sierra 1500 sibling were rated at 90 percent for domestic parts content. (DPC, required by the American Automobile Labeling Act since 1994, rates the percentage, by cost, of a model’s parts that come from the U.S. or Canada; medium- and heavy-duty trucks are not rated.) The F-150 was rated at 75 percent DPC for the 2009 model year. That’s not the case anymore.” This year, however, “the F-150 fell to 55 percent for the 2010 model year. The Silverado, on a steady DPC decline since 2007, has dipped this year below 75 percent — our minimum threshold for AMI-eligible vehicles. Both pickups continue to sell well, but falling DPCs have bedeviled their AMI rankings.”
There is one domestic pickup in the top ten: the Dodge Ram 1500. But, the ranking only applies to Quad and Crew cab models. The regular cab Ram is assembled in Mexico. Half of the top ten cars come from domestic auto makers.
The DPC of the number-one ranked Camry and the number-two ranked Accord are above 75 percent and both cars are assembled in the United States. The Camry is assembled in Georgetown, Kentucky and Lafayette, Indiana; the Accord is assembled in Marysville, Ohio and Lincoln, Alabama.
Here are the top ten cars from the index:
1. Toyota Camry
2. Honda Accord
3. Ford Escape
4. Ford Focus
5. Chevy Malibu
6. Honda Odyssey
7. Dodge Ram 1500 Quad and Crew Cab (the single cab is assembled in Mexico)
8. Toyota Tundra
9. Jeep Wrangler
10. Toyota Sienna
If you’re in the market for a new car, check out the U.S. News rankings of this year’s best cars as well as this month’s best car deals.
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