Economics in a nutshell: "There must be a single number that explains all of this!" It can't possibly be that Germany actually built its exports based on quality. That can't be replicated by tweaking some tax laws.
1. Most people want cars to run 10+ years, even in America (I live in California). Capital, environmental implications, not many new features etc. are valid reasons.
2. Higher quality cars are better to ride in 5 years than lesser quality cars. I would rather drive first 5 years of a car than the only 5 years of a car.
I wonder how blind spot accidents in the US are affected by driver education? I'd love to see a comparison of data between the US, Germany, and Japan on incident rates of such accidents...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Expanded_Mobility_Tactic...
Interesting that you call this stuff like you do. All these systems actually prevented many accidents around the world as cars are getting more and more safe all around.
As for blind spot system. I use it just as another data-point when driving around M25(London). Of course I look at the mirrors and those are perfectly aligned so I have no blind spots but when I look at the mirrors and see no blind spot warning I am sure all is good and I move to the other lane.
In Spain many companies just export with generic names, as it's believed that people associates spanish products with low quality, and this has been apparently confirmed with by Real Instituto Elcano surveys.
I did a reddit thread about this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/ejgwy7/apparentl...
This also happened with specialized and niche products, where you'd expect your customers, specially b2b, to be more rational in their decisions.
Catalonian reputation is heavily, and I'm saying heavily, based in the fact that 1) It played with different (more favourable) rules than other areas, and 2) it attracted talent and workers from all coins of Spain in the past. People from Madrid, Sevilla, Leon, Vigo and Granada is often what would be seen by strangers as "Catalonian talent", for no reason.
And I would add that the so called, "Catalonian reputation" has entered in a sinking phase in the last years. Madrid GDP is increasing faster (Madrid alone surpassed the GDP of the entire four Catalonian provinces in 2018 and this was not common in the past) and thousands of companies are slowly losing interest in the area tired from its permanent state of conflict.
But the currency obviously helps Germany. Still, there are a lot of niche products where companies with around 300 employees can call themselves global market leaders. It is not just cars, although it is the largest industry and there are quite a few manufacturers.
My experience of Economists is that they love a lot of numbers!