QOTD: Do You Care Where Your Car Is Built?

Americans who take possession of a new Jaguar E-Pace can check their VIN to see that the subcompact luxury crossover was assembled in Austria. Each of the 36,813 Buick Envisions sold in the United States through June were imported from China. The Ford Fusion comes from Hermosillo, Mexico; the Honda Accord comes from Marysville, Ohio.

BMW builds SUVs in South Carolina. Mercedes-Benz builds cars and SUVs in Alabama. Volkswagen builds the Atlas and Passat in Tennessee. The Toyota Camry is built in Kentucky, although there’ll be a handful of new 2018 models coming all the way from Japan.

The global automotive market has spoken. “A lot of consumers have no idea where their cars are built,” Renault’s Francois Mariotte tells AutoExpress. Perhaps there are customers who struggle with the notion of German cars being assembled in Mexico, for example, but as Renault’s Mariotte says: “The quality of the car is never determined by the country it’s built in. It’s determined by the processes we put into the factory.”

But do you care where your next new vehicle is assembled?

It’s a reasonable question. If you’re building a new home, you want to know more about the builder’s reputation. If you’re compiling an Olympic basketball team, you need to see proof of citizenship. People certainly like to know if their gourmet burger’s beef is local or not.

So when it comes to cars, do you need your Volvo hails from Sweden, or is a South Carolina facility worthy? Would you choose the Audi Q7 over the BMW X5 in order to get the full European experience, even though the Q7 is built in Slovakia, not Germany? Is the Chevrolet Camaro more appealing to you now that it’s assembled in Michigan, instead of Canada?

Do you care where your car is built?

[Images: Toyota, BMW]

Timothy Cain is a contributing analyst at The Truth About Cars and Autofocus.ca and the founder and former editor of GoodCarBadCar.net. Follow on Twitter @timcaincars.