You have it backwards. A major reason automobiles are more reliable now than they were 50 years ago is because Honda, Mazda and Toyota implemented statistically-driven bottom-up quality control and strategic planning in their manufacturing processes. Ironically an American by the name of William Deming is the person responsible for that change.
Demming tried and failed to convince the big three US automakers of his revolutionary ideas and they wouldn’t listen, the Japanese did.
The result was that, by the 1980s, the US automakers were forced to make a better car or the Japanese would have put them out of business with their superior products.