Muscatine, IA

Muscatine, Ia
Population: 22,900

Just across the border from Illinois, in eastern Iowa, lies Muscatine. Food processing is the big industry in this town, where middle-class neighborhoods branch off from the downtown area. The surprises were not in what people drive, but in what they DON'T.
Ford and Chevrolet trucks do very well in Muscatine, no big surprise for a midwestern manufacturing town. What surprised me was how few Ram pickups I noticed. Dakotas were more numerous but even if I combined both, they would fall far short of the numbers the Chevrolet and Ford trucks were seen in.In such a strong pickup market, I expected a lot more Dodges.
Another vehicle that was noticeably absent was the Mercury Grand Marquis.In the city of my previous entry, Marion, Indiana, these were in good supply and quite popular. I don't think I even saw 5 in Muscatine.
Pretty much all of the Dodge Chargers I observed were law-enforcement cars. I'm sure I could start a separate page just on police car models used by individual departments, but thats even more boring and would amount to about 3 lines per entry.However, I will probably include those findings in future posts on this site just as an additional bit of trivia.
Unlike the previous 2 towns, which were also smaller midwestern cities surrounded by farmland, Muscatine actually has a healthy import market.The Toyota Camry almost made it into the top 5. Corollas and Accords outnumbered all Ford passenger car models and only the Focus outnumbered the Civics that I saw....and not by much.This puts Muscatine a bit closer to the national market than other midwestern cities.
The top 5 of Muscatine:

1. Ford F-series
2.Chevrolet full-size pickups
3.Chrysler Vans
4.Chevrolet Malibu
5.Ford Explorer/Expedition.