Buying a New American Chevy - Oh Really?
Before signing on the dotted line, you might want to check on that. It's not all what it might seem to be at GM, apparently. And the dealer won't tell you, unless you ask specifically about the car you're buying.
How do I know this?
Well, my wife and I decided to buy a brand new car to go with our South Korean-made 2020 KIA Soul. We were replacing our 1996 Ford Ranger pickup, built right here in Minnesota, because, well, its 26 years old and is useless in our snowy winter weather. We wanted a compact or subcompact SUV with all-wheel-drive, or my wife did, anyhow. If it were left to me, I'd buy a late 1960s MG Midget someone had restored for the same money. But...my wife would not like that, so I started doing my online due diligence.
I looked at the Subaru Forester, the Toyota RAV4, a couple of Honda Models and even a Mitsubishi. After all the flak I got here and elsewhere for buying a KIA Soul, though, I decided to see what Good Old American Cars might fit the bill. I checked out several, and the Chevy Trax LS AWD looked like the best match. Priced close to being the cheapest subcompact SUV with AWD, Chevy dealers were offering model year closeout pricing on 2021 models. I talked to a old guy about my age in a supermarket parking lot who was parking one in a handicapped space and asked him how he liked it. He liked it just fine, he said. "Good little car, easy to get into, and pretty comfortable."
That was enough for me. I checked all the Twin Cities metro area dealers, only to discover that there was a serious shortage of 2021 AWD Chevy Trax vehicles available. They aren't making any more 2021s, and they've been popular, apparently. Anyhow, since I had decided to buy American this time, when one dealer said they had a white one coming in on a truck this week, I said, "I'll take it!" I put a deposit on it to hold it, since they were apparently selling instantly when they came into stock.
So, today, I wrote them a check for the total price, signed a few papers, and drove off the lot in my brand new car, with just 8 miles on the clock, less than an hour after walking in the showroom door. It is comfy. It is powerful enough to blend into the 70 mph traffic on the nearest interstate onramp and it has all of the latest bells and whistles, most of which I have not tried yet.
So, when I got home, out of curiosity, I entered my new car's VIN number in one of those sites that gives you vehicle information from that unique identifier. Guess what? It's place of manufacture is: BUPYEONG, SOUTH KOREA. That's the Daewoo factory. Nobody mentioned that at the dealership. Odd, isn't it? So, now, I have two cars built in South Korea.
Funny! I decided to buy a Chevy, and ended up with a Chevy-branded stencil car from Daewoo. Hilarious! Do I care? I don't at all. the two KIAs I've owned have been great, and this Trax probably will be, too.
BTW, the dealer gave my wife and I two high-quality Chevy logo baseball caps as a parting gift. I checked. They were made in China.
The automotive industry is a global industry now. Unless you ask specifically, I wouldn't count on your next American-brand car being manufactured here in the USA. It's a new era. Get used to it. Even if you find one made in this country, it will have part after part made in China or Korea or Taiwan. Count on it. If you enjoy working on your cars, stock up on metric tools. You'll need them on virtually every car sold today.
However, there are hundreds of people in the USA employed by car dealerships, trucking firms, etc. It's just that fewer are employed building cars these days. The nature of work is shifting to a global model.
= new reply since forum marked as read
-- except the part about checking on where the car was manufactured. 
Not condemning you for buying a foreign made car; it's such a big investment that other factors come very much into play. My current car is a 2016 VW Golf made in Mexico, and before that was a 2007 Honda Fit.
Since 1986 I've bought a new economy car roughly every 10 years -- all with 4 cylinders and a 5 speed manual transmission. I really like the Golf; it's fairly refined for a small hatchback and has a good amount of fun-to-drive factor. I've had no problems driving in the Chicagoland winter.
you'll see that almost all of them are made in Japan, so clearly, I don't really care. I wanted a car with the features I was looking for at a good price. That's what I bought. where it was made was not a consideration for me, really.
That wasn't the point of my post, really. My point was that most people don't check where cars are made, especially traditional American branded cars. Most people won't ever check. That isn't the criterion most people use, in the first place.
I bought a Chevy. 
