Consumers responding positively to new American cars

Consumers responding positively to new American cars

A Rasmussen Reports poll fielded in November – before General Motors’ IPO – finds a rise in the preference of “American-built” vehicles, as well as a willingness to accept U.S. built Toyota and BMW products as the same as buying an “American” product.

Forty-one percent of respondents said they look for an “American-built” car first when they’re in the market for a vehicle. That sentiment is attributed by many analysts and researchers to a sense that people are showing more and more sentiment for “buying local.” That’s just a few points below the 44 percent who said they look for “the best possible deal regardless of where it was manufactured” while just 12 percent said they look first for a foreign-built car.

The sentiment favoring American-built car brands has risen quite a bit since Rasmussen conducted a similar poll in June 2008 when just 32 percent said they looked for an American brand first.

This report is good news for foreign owned automakers building vehicles in the U.S. Forty-one percent of respondents said they viewed buying a foreign brand of car that’s manufactured in the U.S. as “the same as buying an ‘American’ product” meaning those people believe a Mexican-built Ford Fusion is just as American as an Ohio-built Honda Civic. Forty-two percent, however, dissented from that notion while the rest were unsure.

The report also found 59 percent saying they “consider just the Detroit Big Three – Ford, General Motors and Chrysler – to be American car companies.”