Just taking a little trip down memory lane here. When I was young, Toyotas and Datsuns were considered junk by most everyone. You never heard anyone say anything positive about them, not even their owners. They were slow, under powered, cramped, and quite the rot boxes. The few people in my neighborhood brave enough to buy one got to see the one thing they did fast, and that was to rust. Yeah, American cars did too, but gaping holes in three years set new records Single wall truck beds were not something that instilled confidence either. They had a very bad reputation and a stigma of being anti-American. There were however, at least three VW beetles on every block, so go figure. It took the gas crisis for people to take them seriously. They have come a long way since then. That was a lot to overcome. If someone would have told me that in fifty years I'd only buy a Toyota, I would have laughed at them. It's a different world today.

Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda are the industrial engineers who created the Toyota Production System between 1948 and 1978.

https://www.carscoops.com/2024/02/to...-in-dead-last/

I've always tried to buy vehicles that had a proven track record regardless of manufacture. Since I retired for Chevrolet Motor Division I can tell you that not all models and years were homeruns, in fact, many were down right junk and would self-destruct. Some 25 years ago when I retired from GM the wife and I decided to give Honda a try, what a difference, five years later and we had spent very little money on repairs over that time, we then traded to a new model with say some 70-80,000 miles on those vehicles. In the last two years we have gone to Toyota and Lexus and really find them to be equal to the Honda in every way. Reason for the change was Toyota just offered models that Honda did not have, just wanted the luxury of the Lexas and the diversity of the 4 Runner. At 78 I think I will just stick with Toyota for the time being.