This is as stupid as the Chicago Tribune story "Does Patriotism Sell Cars?".
For the last 30 years, the media fawns over Toyota and Honda while ignoring their recalls and defects. The media does not investigate their tactic of "silent recalls" to avoid reporting dangerous defects.
Of course, if an American made car has a defective volume control on the radio, it is reported as if thousands will die as a result of their incompetence.
Finally, the media then starts asking people if American cars are all that bad. They are shocked that the PERCEPTION of quality is poor, even though the truth is that there is little difference between American and Japanese quality.
Perception is a lagging indicator.
there's still obvious physical design flaws in so many American cars that makes them look lower quality. Here's an example, had to drive a Dodge Neon recently and it had lights in the rearview mirror, fairly common design feature these days. Except the way they implemented it for the Neon was stupid, first the lights were actually IN the mirror as opposed to in the mirror mounting area so the lights iluminated the top of the dashboard rather than an area the passengers might actually need it (like your lap to look at a map), then they put the buttons in this stupid place where you'll probably put your thumb to adjust the mirror, then they made the mirror one that glues onto the window rather than suspending from the ceiling so there was this ugly cord dangling from the roof to the mirror to give the lights power. A stupid ugly useless design. Then you get other little things like only the front windows being power the rears were hand cranked, and having the old fashioned forward and backward button for the power windows rather than the newer kid safer up and down buttons, and the fact that the automatic transmission had a longer shift lag than most first time stick drivers. Sure the car might have run forever but two minutes of comparing it to a Sentra or Corolla would show that it was a lower quality car.