Many Americans are proud to own cars built by US car companies. While some of your dollars go to American employees and offices, the manufacturing process for your American-made vehicle might begin or end in a different country. Here are 14 cars that American companies don’t build in the States and where they are built instead.
Manufacturing Shifts
It’s been about 50 years since American car companies consistently manufactured most of their vehicles in the United States.
Since the 1970s, American car manufacturers have faced many challenges, including stiff competition from overseas, rising costs, environmental issues, and more. These have seen the proportion of American cars manufactured entirely inside the US fall steadily since then.
Chrysler 300
This one is ironic. Chrysler bought a Super Bowl ad that featured rap star Enimem cruising the streets of Detroit in a Chrysler 300 while showing the downfall and revival of the Motor City. The message behind the commercial was, “You no longer have to cross oceans to get what you can have from these shores.” Technically, the phrase was correct since Chrysler built the 300 in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, and not overseas.
GMC Terrain
The Terrain is a small SUV made by US-based manufacturer GMC, a brand under the umbrella of General Motors. Despite its apparent pedigree, the Terrain has never been built in the United States. GMC started producing the SUV in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada, then shifted production of the second generation to San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
RAM Heavy Duty Trucks
The light-duty 1500 trucks are built in Michigan at the Sterling Heights and Warren manufacturing facilities. But you won’t see a RAM heavy-duty truck come out of an American plant. Those trucks come out of the Saltillo factory in Coahuila, Mexico.
Chevrolet Silverados
The Silverado is one of the best-selling trucks in the United States. The smaller double cabs remain a product built by local hands at locations in Ohio and Michigan. The more popular crew cabs hail from Silao, Mexico, instead of the United States.
Buick Encore
Buick’s popular SUV and its bigger brother, the Encore GX, have sold well, quickly topping 50,000 units in their first year. This means that one of the stalworth American brand’s best-selling cars is not built in the United States but in Bupyeong, South Korea.
Buick Envision
The Envision is Buick’s mid-size SUV. Buyers interested in purchasing an American-made vehicle may be surprised to hear that Buick makes the Envision in Shanghai, China.
Dodge Challenger
This American muscle car provides the retro look and horsepower many drivers seek. Despite being featured in a commercial with George Washington and other revolutionaries behind the wheel as British soldiers flee, the Challenger isn’t American-made. Chrysler chose the Brampton, Canada, plant to build this vehicle.
Chevrolet Trax
Chevrolet started making the Trax in 2015. The vehicle sells well and looks better after a recent redesign. Chevrolet manufactures the Trax in South Korea, Mexico, and China.
Chrysler Pacifica
The Pacifica helped make the minivan popular again. It drives well and has plenty of technology, so it doesn’t feel like your mom’s minivan. Like many other Chryslers on this list, the Pacifica is built in Ontario, Canada rather than the US.
Ford F-150
Ford gets closer to being truly American-made with its full-size truck, the F-150. Despite earning 58th place in the most recent edition of the American-made index (a solid number, considering that over 400 vehicles are on the list), many of the vehicle’s parts are sourced from the United States and Canada, and the 3.5-liter EcoBoost engine is produced in Mexico.
GMC Sierra
The Sierra is the sibling of the aforementioned GMC Silverado, so it is perhaps unsurprising that GMC also makes the Sierra outside the United States in the same Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada manufacturing facility that the Silverado is made in.
Ford Edge
America loves SUVs, and the Ford Edge has been a hit. Ford sources the base motor from Mexico and makes part of the vehicle in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. Ford made over 2,500,000 Edges in Canada, with production in North America ending in 2024. A variant of the Ford Edge L lives on as a China-only model, introduced in China in 2023 and is assembled in Ford’s Hangzhou plant.
Chevrolet Bolt
The Bolt is one of the least American-made vehicles coming from an American company. Workers in the Orion, Michigan, plant may assemble the cars, but Incheon, South Korea, produces important vehicle components, including the battery and powertrain.
Jeep Renegade
The Jeep Renegade is known as an inexpensive off-road SUV. While Jeep is a quintessentially American brand, this vehicle was developed through a partnership with Fiat, based in Italy. In fact, the Renegade is produced in one of Fiat’s Italian production facilities, making it the first Jeep built in Europe. Some parts of the Renegade were also built in Brazil and China.
American-Made Might Not Mean What It Used To
In an increasingly globalized world with sprawling international supply chains, it’s no surprise that finding a car built entirely in the U.S. is becoming rarer and rarer. If you want to know whether or not your vehicle is American-made, you’ll have to use a VIN decoder or look up the origins of the particular model. You might learn that your vehicle has parts from different areas of the globe.
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