In another land
The idea of a car being built in a different country from the one in which its manufacturer is based was almost unthinkable in the 19th century, but was commonplace by the start of the 21st.
While this transition might seem to be a result of the recent trend towards globalisation, it actually began more than a century ago.
There are therefore many examples of what might be described, with various degrees of conviction, as classic cars created not only a very long way from their manufacturers’ headquarters, but in some cases by a completely different company, and we’re looking at 30 of them here.
The images are of the cars as conceived for their home markets, unless otherwise indicated, and they are presented in alphabetical order.
1. Alpine A110
By far the most successful of the early Alpines, the A110 was built mostly in France, but also in three other countries.
Perhaps the least expected of these was Bulgaria, where it was produced under licence by the same people responsible for the Bulgarrenaults (which we’ll come to in due course) and named Bulgaralpine.
The same car was also known as Dinalpin when built under licence by Diesel Nacional in Mexico, but retained its original name when manufactured by FASA in Spain.
None of this represented a new development for Alpine – the earlier A108 was assembled by the Brazilian branch of US manufacturer Willys-Overland, and marketed as the Willys Interlagos.
2. Asüna Sunrunner
Asüna was a very short-lived General Motors brand of the early 1990s, devoted entirely to the Canadian market and distinguished by the fact that absolutely none of its models was built in Canada.
The Sunrunner was simply a first-generation Suzuki Vitara imported from Japan and adapted to local conditions by the straightforward method of putting different badges on it.
Asüna applied the same philosophy to its other models, the Sunfire and the car known variously as the SE or GT, which were renamed versions of the Isuzu Piazza and Daewoo LeMans respectively.
Two other GM brands, Passport (Canada) and Geo (US), operated on a similar basis with slightly more success than Asüna, but all three had been abandoned by the turn of the century.
3. Austin Seven
Sometimes referred to as Britain’s answer to the Ford Model T, the Austin Seven provided cheap family transport in a way which had international appeal between the First and Second World Wars.
Fahrzeugfabrik Eisenach produced the Seven under licence in Germany and sold it as the Dixi, and when another German company which had previously specialised in building aero engines moved into the motor industry by taking over this project in 1928, the car became known as the BMW 3/15 (pictured).
A more powerful roadster version marketed as the 3/15 DA-3 Wartburg is regarded as BMW’s first sports car.
In France, Rosengart began building Sevens more or less to Austin’s specifications in the late 1920s, but went on to develop the engine, chassis, bodywork and suspension over the next decade.
4. BMW 3 Series
Since 1968, BMWs have been built in South Africa by the once-independent company Praetor Monteerders, which was wholly taken over by BMW itself in 1975.
It would take a very long time to run through all the South African BMWs which qualify for inclusion in this list, but one of particular interest is a variant of the 3 Series in its second, E30 generation.
There was no M3 in the line-up, but another high-performance variant called the 333i (pictured) was developed in conjunction with Alpina, and around 200 examples were built between 1985-’87.
It was powered not by the M3’s high-revving, in-line ‘four’, but by a 3.2-litre version of the M30 straight-six, which was never fitted to any other E30 3 Series.
5. Chevrolet Superior
For more than a century, US-based manufacturers have produced cars in Canada under the same name used for those built in their homeland.
One early example, though by no means the earliest, was the Chevrolet Superior of 1923-’26, which was assembled in various factories around the USA but also in Oshawa, Ontario.
Marketed as a more luxurious rival to the enormously successful Ford Model T, the Superior was updated in every model year before being replaced by the Series AA Capitol.
6. Citroën 2CV
Especially among people with minimal interest in motoring, the 2CV might be considered the most characteristically French car there has ever been, yet many of the nearly four million examples were built outside France.
This includes the very last one, which left the Mangualde factory in Portugal in 1990, 42 years after the model made its debut.
Other foreign production took place at, among others, Vigo in Spain, the Belgian municipality known as either Vorst or Forest depending on which language you’re speaking, and Slough in the UK.
Slough supplied 2CV pick-ups to the Royal Navy for use in Malaysia, plus it was the only Citroën factory to produce the glassfibre-bodied, 2CV-based Bijou.
7. Fiat 128
The innovative Fiat 128 was one of the earliest mainstream cars to use what has become more or less the standard front-wheel-drive layout, with the engine and gearbox mounted beside each other across the front axle line.
Fiat 128s were built in Italy, of course, and in eastern Europe, and by Seat in Spain, but also in countries which might come as a surprise to some people.
Somaca, which is now mostly owned by Renault, produced the 128 at its factory in Casablanca, Morocco, while El Nasr, in Egypt, did the same until 2009, nearly a quarter of a century after Fiat itself had discontinued the model.
8. Fiat 600
Though less well-known now than the Nuova 500 introduced two years later, the first Fiat with a rear-mounted engine was a big hit in Italy as soon as it went on sale in 1955.
It was even more so in Spain, where the locally built Seat 600 (pictured) is regarded as having been a major contributor to the country’s ‘economic miracle’.
A German version was known as the Neckar Jagst, and a derivative called the Zastava 750 was built in the former Yugoslavia, from where some examples were shipped in kit form to Bogotá in Colombia for final assembly.
9. Ford Capri
The Capri had multiple national identities right from the start, because it was created by Ford of Europe, a consolidation of Ford’s British, German and Irish subsidiaries.
Capris were built in more than one location within Europe, but also much further afield.
The distant locations included South Africa, where Basil Green took it upon himself to fit Ford’s 5-litre Windsor small-block V8 and modify the rest of the car to cope with the power and torque, which considerably exceeded those of any other version.
Known as the Perana (pictured), this very special Capri so impressed Ford that it officially sanctioned the car, gave it a full warranty and later invited Green to become one of its dealers.
10. Ford Model T
The Model T was a resoundingly North American car, and designed specifically to make motoring possible for vast numbers of people living in that region, but it was also one of the first cars to be built in a wide variety of countries.
Within just a few years of its introduction in 1908, the T was being assembled in Australia, Canada, Trafford Park in Manchester, UK, and Cork in Ireland, the last of these being the European port city closest to the United States.
The geographical expansion continued almost for the whole life of the T.
The Ford Motor Company of South Africa was established in 1923, and was putting together complete cars using parts imported from Canada the following year.
11. Hillman Avenger
Despite being named after a city in south-west England, Plymouth was a distinctively American marque established by Chrysler in 1928 and shut down in 2001.
Its first Cricket, however, wasn’t American at all, but a mildly restyled version of the Hillman Avenger imported from the UK, and offered with both saloon and estate body styles.
Victory in the 1971 Press-On-Regardless Rally was impressive, and provided useful publicity, but even this wasn’t enough to convince buyers on the western side of the Atlantic, and the Cricket was discontinued after 1973, nearly a decade before Hillman Avenger production came to an end.
Later Crickets weren’t American either, but were built by Mitsubishi.
12. Hillman Hunter
Hillman Hunter was just one of many names applied to the Arrow series of saloons, estates and coupés developed by the Rootes Group in the 1960s, and subsequently taken on first by Chrysler and later by Peugeot.
Production was widespread, including at Santry in Ireland (where the final Hunters were built in the late 1970s) and at the Car Assembly plant in Malta, which also built many other models starting with the Triumph Herald.
However, the Hillman Hunter’s extraordinarily long life is due to the fact it was also built under licence in Iran.
Sold there as the Paykan, it survived well into the 21st century, having been developed substantially over the years.
13. Honda Civic
The first-generation Honda Civic, launched in 1972, was produced only in Japan, New Zealand, Indonesia and Malaysia, but by the time of the sixth generation, production had become far more widely distributed.
By then, Civics were also being built in such places as Turkey (where the last example left the line in 1997) and Swindon, UK.
Swindon would later become entirely responsible for manufacturing the Civic Type R hot hatch of the following generation (pictured), even the version sold nine time zones to the east in Honda’s home country.
14. Jeep Cherokee
During the lifetime of the second-generation Cherokee, Jeep was owned first by American Motors, then by Chrysler and finally by the DaimlerChrysler ‘merger of equals’.
This partly explains why Cherokees were built in many countries other than the most obvious one, the United States.
Perhaps the least obvious was Egypt, where Arab American Vehicles had been created in the late 1970s to manufacture military Jeeps.
It subsequently moved into the production of civilian models, taking on the Cherokee in 1992.
15. Mercedes-Benz W120
The W120 was the first Mercedes-Benz with a three-box saloon body, and therefore also the first to be given the nickname ‘ponton’, which refers to exactly this body style.
It was introduced in 1953, and five years later Car Distributors and Assemblers of East London – now known as Mercedes-Benz South Africa, but at the time a prolific producer of cars designed by many other manufacturers – was asked to build it for the local market.
At the same time, CDA began production of the W121 (more or less a W120 with a larger engine) and Mercedes’ more upmarket W180.
16. Mini
If, as suggested earlier, the Citroën 2CV is the archetypal French car, the Mini could be said to be its British equivalent.
Naturally, it was built in the UK, but also, for example, by Innocenti in Italy, by Authi in Spain and by the prolific Car Assembly in Malta.
A particularly unusual version was the South African Wolseley 1000, which had the most common, though not unique, two-box saloon body shape but the ornate front end of the Wolseley Hornet (pictured) and the Riley Elf, both of which had three-box bodies.
After building it from 1967-’69, Leyland South Africa replaced it with the Mini Mk3, which was almost its exact opposite – a three-box saloon with the standard front end.
17. Morris Minor
Launched in 1948, and given the front-end styling by which it became best known four years later, the Minor was immensely popular in the UK, the country where it had been designed.
It was also well-received elsewhere, though, and this prompted assembly far from home, notably in Australia and New Zealand.
However, the first ‘foreign’ Minors were constructed in the particularly important export market of Ireland by GA Brittain of Dublin.
18. Morris Oxford
Morris produced a long series of cars called Oxford from 1913-’71.
In terms of foreign manufacture, our story begins with the first post-Second World War version, which was built under licence in India by Hindustan Motors.
This process continued for a while, and reached its climax with the Oxford Series III, which when produced by Hindustan was known as the Ambassador (pictured).
The Series III was replaced after just three years, but the Ambassador continued, with only minor changes, for 57 years, very nearly as long as the total production life of all Morris Oxfords combined.
19. Nissan Bluebird
The Bluebird of the mid to late 1980s (also known as the Auster or Violet, depending on where it was sold) was the first model built at the Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK plant in Sunderland after it opened in 1986.
This was the start of a new era, because Nissans have continued to be manufactured in the same factory for around four decades.
The Bluebird pictured here, and nicknamed Newbird, is one of the early cars which was rebuilt using the all-electric powertrain of the Nissan Leaf in 2021, to celebrate 35 years of the facility’s existence.
20. Opel Corsa
Although the original Corsa was a German car (and thought of in the UK, fondly though inaccurately, as a British one) it was predominantly built in Spain.
In fact, it was the first model produced at the then recently opened General Motors factory in Zaragoza, which is now owned by Stellantis.
The popular claim that the car was sold in Spain as a Corsa rather than, as it was when wearing Vauxhall badges, as a Nova because nova is the Spanish for ‘it doesn’t go’, is mildly entertaining but completely untrue.
21. Opel Vectra
General Motors Egypt was established in 6th of October City (part of Greater Cairo) in 1983, and initially manufactured trucks and buses.
In 1993 it moved into passenger-car production, the first model being the one known in the UK as the third-generation Vauxhall Cavalier, but everywhere else as the first-generation Opel Vectra, which had been introduced globally five years earlier.
GM Egypt would go on to build many other cars badged either as Opels or as Chevrolets.
22. Peugeot 309
An interesting result of the collapse of the Chrysler Europe organisation, the 309 was essentially a larger version of the Peugeot 205, was in some cases powered by an old Simca engine and was originally intended to be called a Talbot.
The bulk of production took place in Europe, most obviously, for a French marque, in Poissy, but also in Ryton in the UK and Villaverde near the Spanish capital of Madrid.
Following the creation in the 1990s of a joint venture between Peugeot and Premier Automobiles, Peugeot 309s were also built in Kalyan, India, but only for a brief period.
23. Peugeot 504
It was said in 2013 that even in West Africa’s smallest villages a broken-down Peugeot 504 could be returned to roadworthiness within an hour.
The conventional medium-sized French saloon, built from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, was immensely popular throughout that continent due to its strength and reliability, features which helped it to win the 1975 Safari Rally in Kenya, with one Lancia Stratos (the most successful rally car of its era) well behind in second and another an even more distant third.
Peugeot 504s were manufactured not only in South Africa, a long-time powerhouse of car production, but also in Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria, as well as in many other countries around the world.
24. Renault 4CV
Now a subsidiary of Toyota, the previously independent Japanese company Hino is best known for its trucks and buses, but it also produced passenger cars for a relatively short period.
In October 1953, it entered into an agreement with Renault to manufacture the French company’s 4CV (its first post-war model) under licence.
Production reached 3000 in just one year, and hit 10,000 in under three.
The Contessa which replaced it was mostly Hino’s own work, but still used Renault mechanicals.
25. Renault 10
If the Bulgaralpine mentioned earlier seems like an unusual car to be produced in Bulgaria, the same could hardly be said for the more conventional Bulgarrenaults.
There were two models: the 10 (pictured) and the mechanically identical but slightly shorter 8 on which it was based.
They were sold not only in Bulgaria itself but in Austria, the then Yugoslavia and the Middle East, thereby quickly transforming Bulgaria from a country with no motor industry at all into one which exported cars beyond its borders.
Renault took a dim view of this and the arrangement was soon brought to a halt, ending a brief but fascinating chapter of motoring history.
26. Toyota Corona
The third-generation Corona was launched in 1964, and was built mostly at Toyota’s Honsha and Motomachi plants in Japan.
In July 1969, the Ghanaian company Fertile Vehicle Assemblies began producing Coronas, making Ghana only the second country on the continent (after South Africa) where Toyotas were produced.
Much later, Toyota Ghana was created in January 1998, and is still in operation today, though it is a distributor rather than an assembler.
27. Vauxhall Victor
Although it was described in brochures as being ‘designed and built especially for Canadians’, the first Envoy model was simply a very mildly restyled, first-generation Vauxhall Victor imported from Europe.
The Standard, Special and Custom were sedans with different trim levels, while the station-wagon variant was known as the Sherwood.
The car was sold through Canadian Chevrolet and Oldsmobile dealerships, and in a strange state of affairs its closest rival was its almost-identical twin, the Vauxhall-badged Victor, which could be purchased from Pontiac and Buick outlets.
Later Vauxhalls would be sold as Envoys until the brand was discontinued in 1970.
28. Volkswagen Beetle
To cut a long story short, the original Volkswagen Type 1 (known almost universally as the Beetle) is the only car to have been developed at the instigation of Adolf Hitler and saved from oblivion by the British Army.
Production took place only in Germany at first, but soon spread to many other countries.
By 1972, slightly more than halfway through the model’s exceptionally long life, VW Beetles had been assembled in, for example, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and Thailand.
Perhaps the most historically significant of the non-German, Beetle-producing countries, however, is Mexico, where the last of the more than 21 million examples built worldwide left the Puebla plant in July 2003.
29. Volkswagen Golf
While the Golf Mk2 replaced the Golf Mk1 in almost every market, the older model remained in production in South Africa, where VW did not want to lose customers who wanted a low-budget new car and couldn’t afford a Mk2.
Now known as the Citi Golf, the model was updated several times, but was always structurally the same as the one Volkswagen had launched back in 1974 and, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, discontinued nine years later.
The South African plan was so effective that Citi Golfs were still being built as late as 2009, by which time the global Golf had entered its sixth generation.
The car pictured here bears some resemblance to a Mk2 Golf GTI, but is in fact a South African Citi Mk1 special edition built in the final year of production.
30. Volvo 300 series
Volvo is famously a Swedish marque, but the 300 series, which lasted from 1976-’91, was only ever built in The Netherlands.
This came about because Volvo bought the automotive side of Dutch company Daf, which was in the process of designing its largest model to date.
The three-door hatchback known as the 343 (pictured), and the five-door 345 which followed it, both followed Daf principles of using a Renault engine and a continuously variable transmission.
The later and slightly more conventional 360 used Volvo’s own 2-litre engine and a five-speed manual gearbox.
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