Toyota was forced by a class-action lawsuit to recall more vehicles than it produced last year.
What does this tell us?
1) Japanese defects are often hidden.
2) The media made little noise about this story (if it happened to one of the Big 3, it would be frontpage for a week)
3) The conventional wisdom that Japanese vehicles are superior in quality to American vehicles is not supported by the facts. Quality statistics demonstrate over and over again that the quality of todays vehicles are statistically insignificantly different.
"2) The media made little noise about this story (if it happened to one of the Big 3, it would be frontpage for a week)"
Something I forgot to mention. Car snobs hate American cars and tend to be the ones who do automotive writing and reviews.