Tesla grabbed the top four spots in Cars.com's 2025 American-Made Index, but here's the kicker: foreign automakers built two-thirds of the cars that made the list.
The details: Tesla's Model 3, Model Y, Model S, and Model X swept the top positions, with the Jeep Gladiator rounding out the top five.
International brands snagged 67% of the 99 vehicles on the list, a ratio that's held steady since Cars.com standardized its methodology in 2020.
The Kia EV6 ranked sixth but scored the highest domestic parts content of any vehicle on the list at 80% - "which is pretty high really historically," said Patrick Masterson, Cars.com's lead researcher. "Usually if you're 70, 75%, you're at the sharp end of the list."
Honda, Kia, Volkswagen, Toyota, and Nissan claimed 13 of the top 20 spots, leaving Detroit with just three.
What they're saying: "That's about what I expected actually," Masterson said about foreign brands dominating. "Since I've been lead researcher since 2022, that's about the ratio. Two-thirds are international foreign automakers, and a third are domestic."
Tesla's secret sauce: Tesla didn't just win on American parts—they crushed it on workforce manufacturing, which measures how many people actually build the cars here.
"Tesla had the strongest workforce manufacturing component this year and that kind of explains the sweep," Masterson said. "But other manufacturers are right there. They're just as competitive." Often it comes down to "fractions of a point that separate some of these positions."
The Model 3 jumped to number one after not even making the top 10 last year, thanks to a redesign that boosted its domestic content.
Where cars actually get built: Alabama leads with 17 vehicles made there, part of the South's manufacturing boom. The region now builds 55 vehicles on the index versus 41 in the Midwest.
But Masterson pushes back on the "Detroit is dead" narrative: "There's a strong southern presence, but the Midwest is also right up there and has been for the past several years. I don't really feel like there's a huge migration away from places like Michigan."
Between the lines: The index has become an unexpected sales tool. When customers started asking dealers about buying American cars amid tariff discussions, dealers began printing copies to have answers ready.
"When this tariff conversation started we had dealers printing off the 2024 AMI index and keeping it behind the counter and on their desks so they could reference it when talking to car shoppers," Masterson said. During his dealership visits to verify data, he started seeing his own materials being used: "Multiple dealers have been like, 'oh yeah, we know about that, and we use that here.'"
Bottom line: The rankings show that building cars in America has little to do with being an American company. Foreign automakers have invested heavily in U.S. manufacturing while some domestic brands build elsewhere. For dealers, the index provides concrete proof of which purchases actually support American jobs, regardless of corporate nationality.
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Sources: 1. Similarweb, Traffic Report (Cars.com, Autotrader, TrueCar, CARFAX Listings (defined as CARFAX Total visits minus Vehicle History Reports traffic), Q1'25, USA. 2. CarGurus analysis of US dealers that changed a vehicle price based on NBDR recommendations compared to vehicles without an NBDR- informed price change from Nov 2023 through Dec 2024.
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