I lived in Illinois for my entire life up until I came to Ferris in the fall of 2006.

Upon arriv­ing that August, I was one of the many fresh­men who did not bring a car to school. My sopho­more year, how­ever, I was lucky enough to get a 1992 Toyota Camry from my aunt so that I could have a car to drive around town. It wasn’t until then that I real­ized one of the many dif­fer­ences between the auto­mo­tive cul­tures in Michigan and Illinois.

Since get­ting that Camry, and still now while dri­ving a Nissan Sentra, I have caught a lot of flack, both in good fun and seri­ous attacks, for dri­ving a for­eign car. I have been told by var­i­ous indi­vid­u­als that I do not sup­port American jobs and that I am destroy­ing America for dri­ving a Japanese car.

After deal­ing with this for a few years, I real­ized why Michiganders have such a stigma against for­eign cars. For many years Michigan has very much been a one-commodity econ­omy. The finan­cial well-being of the state is depen­dent on the suc­cess of the auto indus­try. This has changed more recently as the Michigan econ­omy has evolved, but there are still left­overs from the many years when GM ruled the job market.

The rea­son why I didn’t under­stand this before, and why the rest of the U.S. out­side of Michigan is the same way, is that our economies are not depen­dent on dri­ving American cars. It is sim­ply not an issue. When car shop­ping, peo­ple read Consumer or CarFax Reports to see what the best deal will be and which car will be the most reli­able; not on which pur­chase will help employ their fam­ily members.

I had a dis­cus­sion about this with my father, who has been a life-long Toyota or Nissan owner. He said he dri­ves these makes because they have proven to be more reli­able. He said that when Japanese cars came on the scene in the late ‘70s they were built very sim­ple and to last, not for showi­ness or excess accessories.

He also quoted a friend, who hap­pened to be a life-long Buick owner, who said, “I drove Buicks in the ‘70s and I drive Buicks today, but the Buick today is far bet­ter than that of the ‘70s because of the Japanese. Their com­pe­ti­tion forced the American auto indus­try to adapt and improve.”

This issue has also evolved because the ques­tion of keep­ing the auto jobs for Americans has changed. Many of the GM plants are now in Mexico or Canada, while Toyota and other Japanese brands are located in the U.S. It is the for­eign com­pa­nies who are now employ­ing Americans at the blue-collar level.

I do not have any­thing against American cars. As stated, I drive what will last me the longest and fit the pro­file of what is nec­es­sary for me. That may be a Toyota or Chevrolet, Volkswagen or Saturn. It sim­ply depends on which is the best fit at that time.

To ana­lyze this issue, I often do a ran­dom, non-technical sam­pling when dri­ving home of how many cars out of 10 on the road are for­eign. In Michigan, I notice around two or three of 10 are for­eign. In Illinois, it is often seven or eight.

There are many other aspects to this issue that can be con­sid­ered, but what is impor­tant to under­stand are the dif­fer­ences in cul­tures between states. Economies change as does sup­ply and demand. What the future holds for the auto indus­try is very much in question.

I hope to show that I am not being vin­dic­tive or anti-American in dri­ving a for­eign car; it is sim­ply a dif­fer­ence of val­ues and cul­ture between states. n