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Comment by tho42i34j234234 | Hacker News Reader

> "their views on quality are different from those of Japanese manufacturers."

I'm not sure what the reality is, but this "Japan is special" delusion needs to go. Yes, they have stuff that is top-notch, but this is not a given (just like in China).

For instance, in India, the top auto-manufacturer Suzuki (like other Japanese/Korean manufacturers) is known to skimp on construction quality and fares quite poorly in terms of safety rating etc. This while Indian manufacturers like Tata/Mahindra are coming out with solidly built models that achieve top-scores in safety.

If you look for videos on Indian Social media, you'll almost always find them pan on Suzuki for its flimsy construction - which is esp. concerning since road safety in India is quite poor.

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Of course Indian people are going to promote India brands on Indian social media, even if they aren’t being paid. I would be surprised if I didn’t see that, not if I do see it.

This story is so old, here’s how it goes: Germany used to manufacture the cheap vehicles after ww2 ended, then Japan started getting their shit together and they started undercutting german cars, then German car manufacturers, noticed they were losing market, so they started marketing their vehicles as more premium, better quality and more exclusive, with a higher price tag. They can’t compete in the same market as Japanese cars so they go to a new market, and they genuinely had been manufacturing for longer so maybe the cars were better quality. Then Japanese cars build a reputation as the manufacturing improves and South Korea starts producing cheap cars as well so now the Japanese manufacturers have to market their cars higher up in the market. Then china comes along… next is India, after that Africa. Along with this , in each of those countries goes the increasing number of middle class citizens and rising costs due to better pay and standards for those citizens… Alright this is a oversimplified version but like dude, of course indian social media is going to praise indian cars.

A heuristic does not need to be true 100% of the time to be useful. Subaru were well known for having timing belt issues that caused motor failure for much of the 2000-2020 era, but were still popular. That doesn't tarnish the good names of the manufacturers that people actually think about when they think about Japanese quality.

Japanese stuff used to be much better than Chinese but they seem to be catching up.

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