American cars have a long-standing history of not being as reliable/durable as Japanese cars, what keeps the US from being able to make quality cars? Can we not just reverse engineer a Toyota, or hire their top engineers for more money?

Question

A lot of Japanese manufacturers like Toyota and Honda, some of the brands with a reputation for the highest quality and longest lasting cars, have factories in the US… and they’re cheaper to buy than a lot of US comparable vehicles. Why can the US not figure out how to make a high quality car that is affordable and one that lasts as long as these other manufacturers?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

There’s a story about Henry Ford examining the reports of failures and break downs in the model T and dertmining that there was one component that never failed and outlasted everything else. He decided that it was being made at a quality that was too high for purpose, so he ordered that it be made to a lesser, cheaper standard.