As others have replied, that is perhaps an antiquated perception.
I think the theory also comes from the fact that the Big 3 seem to have many more recalls than foreign companies. However in recent years, Toyota has actually recalled more cars than any other company [1]. Recalls are most often initiated by the company and not the government and therefore stats can change depending on the willingness of the company to start a recall (as seen by GMs recent problems). Anecdotally, the Asian car manufacturers rarely ever publicly announced recalls and would simply perform the recall when you took your car in for service. Therefore customers never knew there were issues and they were branded as "reliable" cars when perhaps they shouldn't have been.
Comments
As others have replied, that is perhaps an antiquated perception.
I think the theory also comes from the fact that the Big 3 seem to have many more recalls than foreign companies. However in recent years, Toyota has actually recalled more cars than any other company [1]. Recalls are most often initiated by the company and not the government and therefore stats can change depending on the willingness of the company to start a recall (as seen by GMs recent problems). Anecdotally, the Asian car manufacturers rarely ever publicly announced recalls and would simply perform the recall when you took your car in for service. Therefore customers never knew there were issues and they were branded as "reliable" cars when perhaps they shouldn't have been.
1. http://articles.latimes.com/2014/feb/04/autos/la-fi-hy-toyot...