Hard disagree lol, the American OEM standard is a bar so far down you can see the sparks of hell. The improvement was just their initial attempt to catch up before they gave up.

They nuked the EPA regulations which is why everything in the US is an SUV now and they bypassed competition with Japenese OEMs by lobbying congress to make anti import laws (exactly like what they are doing right now for Chinese EVs) which is how we got all these hodpe podge 90s era hybrid deal brands like diamond star or mazda & ford.

By the time those brands finally entered the US market with local production in full, they had already learned the gg ez system from their American counterparts and began to follow the same crappy practices of reducing cost and quality on every possible corner.

I wouldn’t buy a Ford vehicle of this decade even if it ends up being cheaper because the thing is made of ABS plastic and Chinese aluminum glued together with the freshly harvested tears of their yearly department layoffs.