How To Tell Where Your Car Was Manufactured

Posted on: 25 March 2018

Many Americans are interested in buying domestic cars, but many of them also don't know how to know whether a car was manufactured in the U.S. or not. If you ever find yourself in such a quandary, use the following tips to help you learn where each car was manufactured:

Use the VIN

The VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) can tell you a lot about your car, including where it was manufactured. The first thing is to locate the VIN so that you can decode it. This is usually easy; in most cars, the VIN is printed on a plaque under the windshield on the driver's side. Other typical VIN locations include the driver-side doorjamb and the firewall in the engine bay. The first digit or letter of the VIN number tells you the country of origin of the car. VINs for cars manufactured in the U.S. start with the numbers 1, 4 or 5; a VIN any other number or letter means the car was manufactured elsewhere.

Use the Window Sticker

Another trick is to use the car window sticker, which contains a wealth of information such as the make and model of the car, its pricing, its standard features, as well as the country of manufacture. Some cars have window stickers that indicate the percentage of the parts of the car that was manufactured in the U.S. Other stickers may also indicate where the vehicle was assembled.

Conduct an Online Research

The above two methods are the easiest and most accurate, but they aren't the only way you can tell where a car was manufactured. In this day and age, you can always trust the internet to help you out when you are in a jam, and finding the country of origin of a car is no exception. In this case, you need to know everything about the car such as make, model, year, and version or trim level or whichever method the manufacturer uses to differentiate its cars. This is necessary because car manufacturers often produce different variations of the same make, and these variants may be manufactured exclusively in some countries. The only way to be sure that you are getting the right information is to know the car you are researching.

Note that you will first have to define what you mean by a domestic car because there are different definitions for these tags. For example, there are foreign own companies that manufacture cars in the U.S., American car companies that are partly owned by foreigners, and cars whose parts are manufactured in different countries and then assembled in the U.S. 

To learn more, contact a car dealership like Marshall Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram. Thank you for your contribution. Your article has been accepted at 3 stars. For higher ratings in the future, please focus on improving your [examples and flow].

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