By Kevin Meyer
Thanks to Pete over at Shmula for shooting me this tidbit. If you take a look at all cars sold in the U.S. and ranked them by domestic content… parts and final assembly, you might be surprised.
- Toyota Camry
- Ford F150
- Chevrolet Malibu
- Honda Odyssey
- Chevrolet Silverado
- Toyota Siena
- Toyota Tundra
- GMC Sierra 1500
- Ford Taurus
- Toyota Venza
So you want to buy American and support American jobs, communities, and tax base… what will you buy to have the largest impact?
Bruce Baker says
Can you provide a reference? That would be great. I have made this arguement with the Toyota haters (foreign brand haters in general too). It would help with my efforts at proselytization if I had a reference. Thanks for the post.
Mike says
The article linked to at Speed.com says that the vehicles were rated by domestic content AND sales volume, which is why the “big three” fell below the Camry this time. Canadian content was also classified as “American.”
The full details are at cars.com.
Mark Graban says
You have to be careful with the methodology in that study. It’s not that a Camry has MORE content individually than other cars. Please present the context Kevin.
Mike says
What’s the difference between the GMC Sierra and the Chevy Silverado? Apart from trim packages, they should be pretty much identical domestic content. Heck, they even come off the same assembly line! But here they’re ranked #5 and #8?!?
Mark Graban says
Mike- the difference is sales. The study Kevin was referring to weighted two factors:
1) sales
2) percentage American content.
I was hoping he would clarify that.
Kevin Carson says
Makes sense. After all, as James Womack points out, long supply chains are inconsistent with genuine lean principles. Ideally, for lean production, the suppliers are scaled to production flow and sited as close as possible to the point of consumption, just as individual machines are scaled to production flow *within* the factory.
Jeff Holloway says
Parts content is one thing, but what about engineering and design content? How would the survey look if you applied white collar content to the doestic parts content? Isn’t most Toyota design & engineering done in Japan?
Kevin says
Actually a lot of the design, or at least design is done at two Toyota design centers in California and Michigan…
http://www.toyota.com/about/our_business/operations/design/
gandolph says
For a look at different car resale values, check out:
http://www.peterdolph.com/2009/09/should-you-buy-american-car.html