Yes, some of the 80's vehicles from Detroit were very poor quality. Eg it was well known the water pump on a Skylark would only last 30k miles but that's what we put up with.
The manufacturing quality lessons of Honda and Toyota started to hit US in the 90s. I toured a Ford engineering division around then, where they just starting to adopt ideas like empowered workers and continuous measurable improvement. Anyone could stop the line if they saw a problem.
That's very interesting to me to read. My father worked for Ford in the late 70s, and claimed they never stopped the line, even when someone literally had a heart attack on the job.
That may well have been a bogus claim - this was a tour for engineering students they were trying to woo. There was definitely a sense of "look how hip we are, totally not old dinosaurs! Quality is job 1" Either way, they had to change, and they did.
The manufacturing quality lessons of Honda and Toyota started to hit US in the 90s. I toured a Ford engineering division around then, where they just starting to adopt ideas like empowered workers and continuous measurable improvement. Anyone could stop the line if they saw a problem.