Made in America

Next time you see a new foreign-brand car, odds are it was made in America.

Toyotas, Hondas, Subarus, BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes, Hyundais, and others -- more than 40 models of foreign cars, minivans, SUVS, and pickup trucks -- are rolling off assembly lines at 15 plants in the United States so rapidly that last year brought an automotive tipping point.

For the first time, more foreign-brand cars sold in the United States were built here -- 3.7 million -- than were imported -- 3.4 million -- according to the Center for Automotive Research, nonprofit auto industry analysts in Michigan.

That's a sea change from 20 years ago when 460,000 foreign cars were built in the United States while 3.6 million were imported, according to the automotive forecasting wing of J.D. Power and Associates, a California information service company. The latest Power projections for 2005 estimate that 4.8 million of the 7.2 foreign brands that will be sold here will be built here.

The evolution reflects automakers' strategy to build plants closer to buyers, the ever-growing popularity of foreign-brand cars, and the blurring of what ''made in America" means. Is the wildly popular Chrysler 300C a foreign car because Chrysler is now owned by the German company DaimlerChrysler AG? What about a Honda Odyssey minivan, built by American workers and rolling off an assembly line in Lincoln, Ala., or the first big Toyota Tundra pickup truck to roll out the doors of a new plant in the heart of hard-trucking country Texas?

To many people, it doesn't matter. ''A brand's a brand, and people don't care where it originated," said Ron Harbour, president of Harbour Consulting, a Troy, Mich., manufacturing and management consulting firm. ''They can't tell you where it was built or even what country it was built in."

Lonnie Miller, director of industry analysis for R.L. Polk & Co., a Michigan auto information and marketing firm, said that a new generation of young buyers, increasing populations of Asian and Hispanic Americans, and even increasing numbers of older buyers, choose cars not based on brand loyalty or national fealty, but on ''what car best fits their image, or the car rated most reliable or most fun."

He called the change ''a fundamental shift to what the car is offering as opposed to the hood ornament."

The establishment of foreign plants in the United States gives their manufacturers the economic advantages of cutting massive overseas shipping costs and protecting from fluctuations in currency values.

The bulk of these plants are new, modern, and more nimble than Detroit's facilities. Foreign-owned plants offer the flexibility to build as many as four or five models in the same factory, nearly double many American plants. This is a critical advantage in an automotive age where runs of as few as 30,000 of certain models are all that is needed to fill a crucial niche in sales.

What's more, foreign brands use their American presence to convince even loyalist American-only buyers that the car they are buying is American-made. Honda, with plants in Ohio and Alabama, is convincing Americans that ''even though it's a foreign brand, it's a domestic vehicle," said Mike Chung, an analyst for the automotive website Edmunds.com.

Some Honda advertisements, for instance, proclaim: ''After decades of investing in America, it's starting to feel like home. Oh, wait, it is home."

Toyota said one reason it is building its near-billion-dollar pickup truck plant, capable of producing 200,000 Tundras per year, in San Antonio is that it goes right to the heart of the American vision of trucking -- big, wide open, and rugged.

''It's the first time we chose a location for marketing reasons," said Dan Sieger, spokesman for Toyota Motors North America. ''Texas is the biggest pickup market in the country, probably making it the biggest in the world, and to have a truck built by Texans can only make it better."

The car culture change is dramatic. In the 1970s, more than 70 percent of the cars sold in the United States were American-made, but by last year domestic sales had fallen to 58.6 percent.

On the East and West coasts, the split is almost even, according to R.L. Polk. The differences are wider elsewhere. Only the South (60.4 percent domestic) and the Midwest (71.2 percent) are keeping American manufacturers in the lead.

The gap continues to close. Polk's Miller noted that states the Census Bureau ranks among the fastest growing -- California, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas -- are hotbeds of growing populations of young and immigrant buyers who prefer foreign-brand cars.

The surge in gasoline prices could certainly close the gap further. Any significant turn away from SUVs and trucks, which burn more gas, could easily turn Americans to foreign cars, which have a better reputation for quality.

Foreign plants are mostly located in the very regions where foreign auto sales have been weakest: the South and Midwest. Yet in both areas, the Polk study showed, their sales climbed nearly 10 percent in recent years. It is in these zones that the foreign companies, just like some losing national political candidates, are hoping to see their next big gains.

''It's almost a red state-blue state thing," said consultant Harbour.

Subaru's Lafayette, Ind., plant, backed by a nearly $1.5 billion investment, has almost 3.3 million square feet of floor space. It can produce 9,740 vehicles per month, and employs 2,334 people. Hyundai, among the newest on the block with a Montgomery, Ala., plant, invested $1.1 billion in a 2 million-square-foot factory that employs more than 2,000.

The foreign plants are mostly nonunion, though their pay scales -- around $25 per hour on average -- are similar to the scales negotiated by the United Auto Workers for domestic plants. Benefits may be slightly lower, said a UAW spokesman.

Pay and benefits at the foreign-owned plants are ''almost exactly the same as at domestic plants," said Steven Szakaly, economist with the Center for Automotive Research, which issued a report declaring that compensation in these plants is ''among the highest of all manufacturing industries in the US economy."

''Whatever the UAW wins, it's going to have to be matched at the foreign plants," as one way of keeping unions at bay, said Szakaly.

Royal Ford can be reached at ford@globe.com.