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Comment by bprater | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that 8/10 new cars that were purchased where foreign. I wonder what percentage of that rebate trickles into American pockets and which goes overseas.

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Do note that foreign company does not mean a transfer of capital over to foreign hands. TM has a pretty large industrial footprint inside the US, and then you've got pensions and other funds that own TM paper.

That's not necessarily true. Brands which sold a lot of different models could sell a large number of cars without making it to the top 10 models.

Here's the breakdown by manufacturer from the DOT press release:

  New Vehicles Manufacturers

  Toyota - 19.4%
  General Motors - 17.6%
  Ford - 14.4%
  Honda - 13.0%
  Nissan - 8.7%
  Hyundai - 7.2%
  Chrysler - 6.6%
  Kia - 4.3%
  Subaru - 2.5%
  Mazda - 2.4%
  Volkswagen - 2.0%
  Suzuki - 0.6%
  Mitsubishi - 0.5%
  MINI - 0.4%
  Smart - 0.2%
  Volvo - 0.1%
  All Other - <0.1%

I think what's slightly more interesting is the fact that the top 10 purchased cars are all small cars, given that the majority of the cars likely came from suburban America.

There is a slight stat game going on here that may or may not be intentional. The evidence is at #10 Ford Escape FWD. Trucks and SUV's come in a variety of transmission configurations and are actually counted as unique models for these stats.

Here is normalized list from earlier this month http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/07/autos/cash_for_clunkers_sale...

and the top 10 traded in were all American. that's pretty damned embarrassing.

.. and quite predictable.

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