I think i'm finally coming around to japanese cars of the modern era. Fact is, and i've read this from multiple cars enthusiast sites, is that the japanese artificially inflates the yen to keep there car industry at a constant advantage over others. This, among other things, is the root to why the domestics complain over there big disadvantage of production quality per dollar. When exchange rates are not in your favor there isn't much you can do. And now european cars are at an even bigger disadvantage with the euro getting close to 1.50 dollars per euro. Even porsche isn't off the targets as the new base model nissan GTR is claimed to have lapped the "ring" 2 seconds quicker than a 997 turbo!
http://www.autoblog.com/2007/09/22/round-1-gt-r-vs-911-turbo-at-the-ring-advantage-gt-r/
Anyhow this comes from my experience test driving compact cars yesterday. I went out and test drove a mazda 3 5-door and was blow away by the quality and design of the interior on a car that is 18k new. Not only was it fun to drive, being very planted and easy to toss around and point the nose where you want (must be the zoom-zoom
), but it has a gorgeous interior with very tight gaps, nice materials, and gorgeous layout. Although not in the sports car league, i haven't enjoyed driving a car like that since my 944 that i had years ago. Then i read through various surveys and quality reports and in most cases it ranks up there with corrolas and civics, others it ranks higher. Needless to say, i'm now selling my beetle...........