>I’m also kind of amused at how the entire business world basically said, “man, this company made super reliable cars in the 80’s and 90’s[1], let’s learn their secrets” and it turns out that once you strip away the exotic Japanese veneer, it’s mostly just systemized common sense. Which is not a minor thing to do, to be fair, except it’s easy for businesses to take good, well-systemized ideas and utterly misapply them.
This was basically all done over UAW's dead body. It's not like process engineers working at the big three in the 80s didn't want to do those things. They were aware of what industry best practices were as any competent professionals would be. They just couldn't get those best practices implemented until the Japanese manufacturers created an existential threat to the status quo.
Cyber security is in a similar situation today. The will to do the known right things is not there and won't be until there's an existential threat to the companies that are being lazy. Whether that threat will be regulatory, market based or something else but I guarantee little will change until it becomes a binary choice between change and going out of business.
> As far as I know, they still make reliable cars.
There's a pretty substantial lag between reality and market perception. All the people paying lightly used 3/4 ton truck and fullsize SUV prices for Tacomas and 4Runners with 100k+ on them had better hope that what they're buying today lives up to the reputation of vehicles sold 10-20yr ago.
>we’re 26 years away from seeing if today’s Camry is quite that reliable.
Unless they make a complete turd it will be more reliable because they hold their value well giving them a longer period of time when they are out of reach of customers who are hard on equipment.
Vehicles move down the economic ladder as they change hands. Rich people have more free cash flow to spend maintaining their car (especially preventative maintenance). This skews age based reliability data in favor of whatever vehicles wealthier people drive.
Economic factors make differences in vehicle reliability from brand to brand look much greater than they are.
If you want to see this in action look for 80s GM sedans on Craigslist in a state that salts the roads. The Buicks, Olds, and Caddys are over-represented because their first and second owners were more likely park them in a garage (or at least off the street), pay for preventative maintenance, etc. allowing them to stick around longer because they were (on average) in better condition than the equivalent average Chevy of the same age, had more useful life left, etc. The upscale cars had to get to their 2nd and 3rd owners before they were treated the way the Chevys were treated by their first and second owners giving them the appearance of greater reliability despite being the exact same platforms. the chevy might have 3-5 owners before going to the junkyard whereas the Caddy may have 4-7 (and therefore stick around for more years) because it basically starts off several rungs higher on the economic ladder.