They didn't, and don't, walk on water.
What they did do was to fully embrace quality control principles that work. W. Edwards Deming was mostly blown off here in the US, but embraced as a hero in Japan.
How'd THAT one work out?
Americans had to learn about quality from the Japanese. When GM started Saturn, and wanted to build high-quality cars, they took apart Japanese cars and studied them.
Exactly.
Years ago Iacocca should’ve seen the US auto collapse coming.
There is nothing wrong with American workers until the UAW or any union gets into an American factory. Once the UAW gets in it goes to sh*t. Japanese and German workers want their car company to succeed. The UAW wants to bleed the car company to death.
You know that was decades ago, right? And that they found that the heavily government-subsidized Japanese auto industry was dumping cars on the market for far below what it could possibly have cost to build them. And that the control the Japanese manufacturers had over suppliers looked more like organized crime? And don't forget that the working conditions for the Japanese are and always have been abysmal.
Look, those who know the industry have been saying for years that when Toyota and Honda have to build the numbers and types of cars that the domestics do, their quality would come in line with GM and Ford. That is what happened to the Germans - no one talks about VW and Mercedes having bullet-proof reliability anymore. The fact is, the quality numbers have not been significantly different between domestics and Japanese for years.
It's never been a level playing field.
Arguing with the GM/Ford fanboys is as effective as conversations with the anti-Mormons.