It was a big deal a couple of years ago when my wife and I bought a Honda minivan. We’re both from Detroit, you see, and we always assumed we’d spend our lives driving Ford, GM, or Chrysler products. Buying “foreign” seemed like a betrayal of our roots, to say nothing of our relatives whose livelihoods are tied to the U.S. auto industry. But we ultimately made the jump, partly because we were fed up with the quality of a vehicle we owned (I won’t name names, except to say its maker rhymes with “hodge-podge”) and the Honda minivan seemed so much better than everything else, with the exception of Toyota. (Three years into the deal, we’ve been 100% pleased with it, too.)

Anyway, it was with some satisfaction that I read this report in today’s WSJ:

Few sports cars have captured the nation’s imagination like the sleek Ford Mustang, a 21st-century reincarnation of an American classic. The Toyota Sienna minivan, by contrast, speaks to the utilitarian aesthetics of Japan: refined interiors, arm rests and lots and lots of cup holders.
Yet, by a crucial measure, the Sienna is far more American than the Mustang. Statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that were publicized in “Auto Industry Update: 2006,” a presentation by Farmington Hills, Mich., research company CSM Worldwide, show only 65% of the content of a Ford Mustang comes from the U.S. or Canada. Ford Motor Co. buys the rest of the Mustang’s parts abroad. By contrast, the Sienna, sold by Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp., is assembled in Indiana with 90% local components.
There’s more than a little irony in this, considering Ford has launched a campaign to regain its footing with an appeal to patriotism (catchphrase: “Red, White & Bold”). “Americans really do want to buy American brands,” asserted Ford Executive Vice President Mark Fields in a recent speech. “We will compete vigorously to be America’s car company.”
As the Mustang shows, though, it’s no longer easy to define what is American. For 20 years now, the dynamic car makers of Asia — led by Toyota, Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. — have been pouring money into North America, investing in plants, suppliers and dealerships as well as design, testing and research centers. Their factories used to be derided as “transplants,” foreign-owned plants just knocking together imported parts. Today, the Asian car makers are a fully functioning industry, big and powerful enough to challenge Detroit’s claim to the heart of U.S. car manufacturing.
The result is a brewing public-relations war, with both sides wrapping themselves in the Stars and Stripes. Toyota, for example has been running commercials touting its contribution to the areas of the U.S. economy where it has built factories.

I’ve seen those ads–they’re all over the Metro system in DC. As to the larger matter: What we’re witnessing here is the death of the “foreign” car. It seems that there is no such thing anymore.