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

They could. There isn’t as much profit to be made doing that.

Sell them a cheap car that lasts a long time?

Or sell them an expensive car that will need to be replaced in a “short” amount of time.

One of those makes your company more money. You could argue that people will just buy the better car once they know you are selling poor quality vehicles but… are they? Plenty of people still buy American despite knowing they are overpriced and of poor quality.