Fact is, every brand of car has it individual vehicles that perform poorly and every brand has some that go for many miles with no problems. Overall, the typical car today is far superior to the typical car of years ago, no matter who made it or the country of origin.
I bought my first non-GM car in many years because I was unhappy with my present one, but that certainly won't fix the old one or absolve the new one from problems. I was not happy about rebuilding the transmission, but, that is the first time in 46 years of driving that I'd had to do a serious repair on a transmission.
If you compare the cars of the '50s and '60s that we grew up with and still love the styling, they were poorly built and had very high routine maintenance. Clean your plugs at 5,000 miles, replace plugs, points, rotor at 10,000 miles. Oil change and chassis lube at 2000 miles. Common to do a ring job at 50,000 miles, maybe bearings too. Muffler was good for a couple of years and flat tires a few times a year.
Once you got the new car home from the dealer you started a list of things for the dealer to repair under warranty. Common to have 10, 20, or even more items on that list. Of the last four cars I bought new, one has one defect from the factory, another had none for six months, the other had none for a year, my present car has none on 18 months and 34k miles.