By Lionel Kong

THAT JAPANESE CAR you own probably isn’t made in Japan. And that American car your neighbour drives probably doesn’t come from America either. Speaking of which, that German car which you’ve been thinking of buying could have been assembled outside of Germany too.

For those that haven’t been keeping track, the automobile manufacturing business has been growing at an enormous pace over the last few decades, and almost all major car manufacturers have been moving their production lines beyond the borders of their home countries. Closest to home are of course, popular cars like the Toyota Corolla Altis and Honda City. Both are Japanese cars, but are assembled in Thailand. The manufacturers build factories closer to the cars’ target markets in order to be able to meet customer demand as well as develop products that are able to cater to what drivers what. After all, even a company as large as Toyota can’t possibly build cars for export to the whole world in Japan. The export costs would be prohibitively expensive, and the Japanese factories simply wouldn’t be able to cope with the high volume.

A check with the Japan Automobile Manufacturer’s Association report from 2007 reveals data that might come as a surprise to many drivers here. All the major Japanese automakers have factories throughout the world, producing cars for their immediate regions. American Toyota Camrys are made in Kentucky, at a plant that has been operational since 1988. The Toyota Aygo, a compact car for sale in Europe, is manufactured in the Czech Republic. Honda builds its left hand-drive Accords, CR-Vs, Odysseys and Elements in America, and Subaru does the same for it sold-in-America Outbacks, Legacys and Tribecas.

In Asia, Honda Civics and CR-Vs sold in China are assembled at the Dongfeng Honda Automobile Ltd. Plant near Wuhan, which has a production capacity of 120,000 cars per year. Dongfeng also has an agreemment with Nissan to assemble the Teana, Sunny and Tiida (known here as the Latio) for sale in China, while the Chinese market Mazda3 is assembled by the Changan Ford Mazda company near Chongqing. The growing affluence of the Chinese means that in order for automakers to keep up with the demand, many of their products have to be assembled there.

Even German cars, a status symbol in many countries, are slowly being moved away from German production in an effort to keep costs low. In June this year, Mercedes-Benz announced that it is building a new manufacturing plant in Hungary to build its next-generation A and B-Class models, to be operational by 2011. One of the key considerations was that it is much cheaper to run in factory in Hungary than in Germany.

Volkswagen’s new Scirocco is another car that will be assembled entirely outside Germany. It will be built at the Autoeuropa factory in Palmela, in Portugal and the factory has exclusive rights to building it for the next eight years.

In Malaysia, Perodua’s lineup of cars are all Daihatsu designs, manufactured under agreement.

What is common knowledge amongst car enthusiasts here is that many of our Japanese and American-badged cars come from factories in Thailand. Toyota’s manufacturing plant in Thailand is one of the largest of its kind in the region, employing almost 12,000 people and producing 410,000 cars per year. It exports many of its products to many countries in the Asian region.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Together, the Japanese automakers have factories assembling complete cars in Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, Spain and the United Kingdom as well.

An American spokesperson from Chevrolet once told us that we have to stop looking at the car companies as being country-specific. Using the company that he works for as an example, he said “Chevrolet has ceased being just an American brand. The brand has moved production beyond American shores, designing products for worldwide consumption. We are now seeing ourselves as an international brand, with bases all over the world.”

Does this make your made-in-Thailand, Japanese badged car any less of a real product than a made-in-Japan, Japanese badged car? The manufacturer itself will tell you that it doesn’t. The master plan is to bring the location of manufacture closer to the customer, and they’ll all tell you that the product you’re getting is still being designed by the best and subjected to the same stringent quality checks anywhere in the world. It’s an idea that admittedly we’re still getting used to.