Can Americans Even Afford To Buy American-Made Cars?

This morning, a new survey proclaimed that 55% of “in-market car shoppers” would be willing to pay more for a car if it created American jobs. If new taxes keep discouraging imported vehicles and materials from our market, we’re not going to have a choice. Vehicles assembled in American factories carry the highest average price—$53,000—compared to the overall average of about $50,000.

Cars.com’s new “American-Made Index,” a big info-dump on the state of our auto industry and its relationship to the global car economy, is the source of these little revelations. Some of the 2025 AMI stats are consistent with what we’ve seen the last few years: Tesla and Honda do the most car-making in America, while the Ford F-150 and Chevy Silverado are not even in the top 20 “most American.” The Jeep Gladiator, built in Toledo, is the only pickup truck that really syncs with its rah-rah-‘murica marketing. At least, from a manufacturing standpoint. Meanwhile, Korean companies seem to be trending toward American assembly most expediously; the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, and Kia EV9 are now all made in Georgia. The EV6 has a remarkably high American parts content of 80%.

But the difference in average pricing by nation of origin is what caught my attention this year. The takeaway is: Inexpensive cars are dying, and taxes are speeding their demise. These two slides from the AMI presentation lay the situation out (scroll between them with the little arrows on the sides of the slide):

The bottom line is that cars made in America are, generally speaking, more expensive. There are not that many new vehicles with an MSRP under $30,000 these days, but of the ones that are, 91% are manufactured abroad and exposed to the pressures of tariffs. More specifically, out of 19 U.S. market cars listed under $35,000, only two are made in America. The data above tells us that de-globalizing the automobile industry will increase consumer costs. But the scariest part is, nobody really knows what the long-term logistical environment for cars will look like. And that’s a tough problem to face when every company in an industry is international.

Got a tip? Drop us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post Can Americans Even Afford To Buy American-Made Cars? appeared first on The Drive.