It would be unheard of buy a foreign-made Jeep, right? Jeeps are supposed to be all-American, a symbol of the American way of life. Gasoline may have cost more than $4 a gallon a couple months ago, but that won’t stop us from driving and off-roading our Jeep Wranglers. Jeeps are currently all produced in the United States: the Grand Cherokee and Commander in Detroit, the Wrangler and Liberty in Toledo, and the Patriot and Compass in Belvidere in Illinois.
For the most part, Jeeps have always been made in America, besides a brief stint of Wrangler production in Canada and a couple footnotes in other countries. Colonel Bhagwati Prasad Suman of Argentum Motors has suggested that building vehicles in India will save Jeep at least 15% in production costs compared with production in the U.S.
It seems improbable that an American icon of ruggedness would be built overseas. But times change, markets change, and companies must make decisions to stay in business. At one point, most Japanese cars were actually made in Japan, but now big players Toyota and Honda are assembling their most popular vehicles “overseas” (in the U.S.). If you have been a Jeep loyalist, what would you think of Indian-produced Jeeps?