American-Made Index 2025: How American is your truck?

Every year the Cars.com American-Made Index comes out, and we look at the trucks on the list, there’s always a bit of: “Say what?!” The trucks you think would be the most American often end up at the bottom of the list. This year, we’re excited to see that an American truck is back on top, but it’s probably not the one you’d expect.

Jeep Gladiator jumps up three spots and knocks the Honda Ridgeline off the top-dog spot, which it had held for the last few years.

Here’s a breakdown of how the American-Made Index (AMI) is created and which trucks do – and don’t – make the cut.

How the American-Made Index works

In order to create the American-Made Index, the editors at Cars.com take a look the more than 400 vehicles that are currently on sale in the U.S., and then they cull the list by the location of final assembly – only vehicles made in the U.S. up for consideration. Then, they look at percentage of U.S. and Canadian parts, countries of origin for all available engines, countries of origin for all available transmissions and the U.S. manufacturing workforce.

Additionally, the AMI excludes models with a gross vehicle weight rating above 8,500 pounds and meet a minimum sales requirement of 2,500 vehicles sold in the first quarter of the year. This is why you won’t see heavy-duty trucks on the list, and why low-volume sellers like the Rivian R1T and Cybertruck miss the mark.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that Cars.com cuts the list off at 99 each year, even though 133 vehicles are made in America.

Does the American-Made Index matter?

In a word: Yes. In the era of Trump tariffs, the AMI probably matters now more than ever. As we pointed out in an article yesterday, all vehicles made outside of the U.S. (including those made in Canada and Mexico) are now subject to a 25% tariff. And, as Cars.com pointed out during a media briefing on the AMI, 51% of people they surveyed said that the new tariffs have impacted their desire to buy an American-made vehicle.

Furthermore, 55% of survey respondents said they’d be willing to pay more if buying an American-made vehicle means more U.S. jobs. How much more? According to the data, the majority of the people surveyed across all generations said they’d pay 5% to 20% more. Considering the average price of a new full-size truck is $58,689 and a midsize truck is $44,986, they’d be willing to pay between $2k to $11k more for a truck.

And the most American trucks are …

The three most-American trucks are the Jeep Gladiator, Honda Ridgeline and Chevrolet Colorado – all of which make the top 20 on the AMI. We always find it interesting that Ford, Ram and Chevy don’t fall higher on the list and that trucks from Honda and Toyota are more American than the GMC Sierra and Chevy Silverado.

Here’s the complete list of trucks and their AMI ranking:

You’ll notice that neither the Ford Maverick nor the Toyota Tacoma are on this list, and that’s because they are both assembled in Mexico.

Our take on the AMI

With the current tariff situation, you’re likely going to pay more for your next truck regardless of whether it’s built in the U.S. or not. Tariffs affect not only final assembly but also all the parts that go into the truck. So, if the truck is assembled in the U.S., but the engine and transmission aren’t, you’ll get tariffed on a percentage of parts.

Even if everything on the truck is made in America, there will still be increased costs because our economy isn’t currently set up to produce things like aluminum or rare earth magnets, so increased infrastructure costs and investments in manufacturing will cost billions of dollars (and years of time), which ultimately get passed on to consumers.

Be sure to check out the full AMI to see the complete list of cars and SUVs, in addition to trucks. Spoiler alert: Tesla takes the top four spots.