Large amounts of spare parts made? Manufacturing process? Design differences?
In: Technology
In short, Japanese engineering. There’s a lot to be said for company loyalty and the idea that one does a good job to honour oneself and the company. There are a few American companies (Zippo for example) driven by pride in their design who’ll offer a lifetime guarantee on their products, but mostly you’ll find employees just doing whatever they need to do to get by and make a product that will sell and survive just long enough for the new model to be ready.
Toyota revolutionized a manufacturing process about 40 years ago that allowed bottom up refinements to address manufacturing issues (the assembly guys on the line can spot an issue and report it up the hierarchy to get it changed, rather than waiting for the managers and engineers to discover issue) and had an extreme focus on quality. At this point, other car makers have caught up in many respects and it’s more reputation than anything at this point. And the worst brands today are still better than the best a generation ago in terms of reliability.
Beyond their production processes that everyone mentioned. The Japanese take fucking PRIDE in their work. I’m sure there’s a million corners an American company would cut to cut costs, but the Japanese care about selling a reliable product. Hondas, Toyotas, and Yamaha fucking jet skis.
Yamaha “turbojet” jetskis have identical engine bays from the late 90s to 2019. They found what worked, they made a few larger engines, but they stuck with what worked. No need to change it drastically every 2 years to up the price; just a fun, reliable machine.
I fucking love the Japanese
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Decent manufacturing practices + Kaizen (2 second lean here in the US) = an affordable car that lasts longer than other competitors at that price point.
Kaizen principles are excellent if leveraged effectively. Usually they’re hackneyed attempts by corporate overlords to maximize profits, which isn’t the point of Kaizen.
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Having taken apart and rebuilt my 2000 Toyota Tacoma I can say that the engine was designed to be fixed. The sizes of all the hardware is very consistent and it all fits together in a simple way.
I was lucky enough to visit Toyota in Japan, it is insane, its a whole city, Toyota city. I’m not the biggest fan of Toyota but after visiting a couple museums and a factory tour, I came out with an I credible respect and appreciation. The assembly lines were incredibly clean and efficient despite regular groups of distracting tourists. The museum had incredible detail, I could easily have spent half a week learning. It started from the VERY beginning, how they originally make textiles from cotton. The old equipment and factories. it was a functional museum they did regular demos of various processes, they had a full size stamp that they used to shape a door panel, it was like 3 stories. They showed various innovations and steps for every car part from the headlight to different engines.
I could go on but if thats the kind of work and dedication that goes into just their museum, it doesn’t surprise me the quality of cars they make. If you ever get the chance, I would highly recommend visiting.
>Manufacturing process? Design differences
TL;DR: These.
Specifically, how they approach designing the vehicle and it’s components, and the requirements for manufacturing the parts.
They design a vehicle that’s as basic as they can get away with. Many non-luxury Japanese vehicles don’t have some bells and whistles that other manufacturers add, and they make the same designs for years, refining it as they go (other companies do this too, I can think of a Ford V6 that’s had variations put in the Ranger, Explorer, and Mustang for years).
Then the parts are manufactured to tighter tolerances than other manufacturers bother with. Toyota recently teamed up with BMW on a sports car, and reportedly BMW people were shocked by the high quality assurance Toyota’s people insisted on.
This isn’t an absolute. There are a couple Japanese brands that don’t quite have the reputation Toyota or Honda do. There are a couple European brands that have reputations for being quite reliable, contrasting other Euro nameplates. You can find extremely reliable examples of any brands vehicles, and you can find lemon Hondas. Heck they had an issue with a certain CRV engines and cold starts/short trips recently.
Luckily most modern cars are very reliable compared to even twenty years ago, and cars of the 2000’s and 2010’s were much better than cars of the 1980’s (which is partly why the used car market is so strong right now). Takeaway message for buyers: do a little research and decide if you can live with the possibility of one or more of the common issues (they all seem to have *something*), the car you’re interested in might develop, on the slim chance it develops a problem at all.
*Edit:* please forgive typos, am on mobile and am tired.
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