Yeah, yeah, yeah, Hilux good because Top Gear, we get it,

Car reliability is just applied sociology. Vehicles last however long people keep fixing them and people keep fixing them as long as they expect them to last.

The 80s Japanese cars that the internet loves to circle jerk about where not any better than their domestic counterparts when put in equivalent hands. It wasn't until the 90s when the domestics somewhat ignored their car lines in favor of the new SUV hotness that the Japanese cars pulled ahead in terms of quality. You have to remember that the Japanese had various levels of partnerships with various American manufacturers at this time. It's not like either group was doing things the other was unaware of.

The K-cars and the other domestic stuff was CHEAP. That means that a lot more of them found themselves in the hands of bottom of the barrel customers. The kind of people who today roll 10k of negative equity into a Nissan Altima financed for 84mo with $0 down. Those are not the kind of vehicles that get garaged, get maintained on schedule and get cared for well. The Japanese stuff got put in slightly more caring hands from the get go (because the people who don't care about spending a few extra grand up front tend to also be willing to pony up for more preventive maintenance) and then 20, 30, 40yr out proportionally slightly more of it is still around. Look at what's on the used market for Crown Vics vs what's on the used market for Grand Marquis if you want to see a great example of this. Even if you exclude cop and taxi vehicles Vics will all be clapped out compared to the GMs because they weren't mostly owned by gray hairs who treated them nicely.

You also have to consider whether a vehicle's customer demographic trades in frequently, trades in infrequently or sells private party. The first couple generations of minivans mostly got bought by rich suburbanites who traded them in after say 5ish yr. Exporters bought tons of them. You'd think they're unreliable because you never see them in the first world but there are tens/hundreds of thousands of happy 1995 Ford Aerostar and 2002 Honda CRV owners in places like South America. The lower class variants of those same types of vehicles say the 1999 Town and Country and the 2004 Santa Fe are still abundant om American roads because the buyers were generally less well off and more likely to sell private party.

Go browse bubble Taurus (3rd gen I think) and Subaru Outback sedans on Craigslist, see what kind of condition they're all in then do the same for their more utilitarian station wagon counterparts (and adjust by relative sales numbers) and you'll see how much the expected use case and lifetime of a vehicle is a self fulfilling prophecy. Sedans get used hard as commuter cars and then junked or sold depending on age. Wagons are useful so wagons stick around as long as they run and keep getting fixed as long as it's not something crazy.

One should also keep in mind that all the production stuff from the article only really applies to the first slope in the bath tub curve. Once the vehicles have been on the road 5yr they will either be fixed because they weren't built right or they will have been built right from the get go. How long the vehicles last after that is mostly a reflection of the design rather than the execution on that.

Source: Former low end car flipper, junkyard employee, and currently own a small fleet of random 80s-90s foreign and domestic non-enthusiast cars.