Originally Posted By: LoneRanger
Originally Posted By: khittner
Who cares? Buy a Camry if you want an American car.
Companies and federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies might care. Fusion is quite popular as a fleet car for companies, and as a detective car for pd's due to it's low cost, efficiency, low maintenance, and ruggedness. Cheap solid cars that sip fuel (from a fleet perspective) with American branding that government entities need to show in purchasing (even if not built here still wears badging of domestic manufacturer). And before the "Camry/Accord/ has more actual USA parts content and's made here!!..." argument is proffered, for government entities that answer to the taxpayer it's still important to them to show they've spent tax dollars on an American branded product.
Largely due to dwindling sedan sales, Australia recently lost our Ford, Holden and Toyota plants, and therefore the vehicles they made, which were designed, engineered and built to cope with our conditions. The fleet managers couldn't care less. Once it was widely known that Commodore and Falcon would cease production, the fleets simply stopped buying them. Ironically, lots of them switched to Hybrid Camry's, probably unaware that Aussie production of those was ending too!
Camry is the general duties and detectives police car of choice these days. For highway patrol cars, Victoria Police are replacing Fords and Holdens with 5 Series BMW's. Tasmania went to Subaru Liberty's (Legacy). Other states are apparently evaluating the Kia Stinger. I hope it works out differently in the US, but patriotism didn't help any here, government agencies don't give a hoot about buying the local product, and sadly, neither do the general public.