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.
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 poll also found 59 percent saying they "consider just the Detroit Big Three – Ford, General Motors and Chrysler – to be American car companies."
Fifty-four percent of Americans said they are less likely to buy a GM car because the federal government is/was the automaker's majority owner. Still, in a separate survey in early June, 48 percent of those who planned to buy a new or used car in the next year said they are at least somewhat likely to buy either a Ford or a vehicle made by GM. Those findings included 20 percent who were 'Very Likely' to buy a Ford and 26 percent 'Very Likely' to buy a GM product instead.
autoblog.com