Japanese Car Companies Pass Foreign Companies

 Despite essentially getting kicked out of Japan due to Japan's no tolerance for foreigners policy, foreign car companies were confident that Japan would never be able to surpass them. Why? Because it was Japan and they weren't Japan. Turned out, that wasn't quite enough. Big luxury car companies laughed when Japan announced it would compete directly with their products, but they stopped laughing when Japan almost wiped them off the map. Japan's success was mainly due to catering more directly to the customer than foreign car companies. Henry Ford famously said that his customers could have any color car they wanted, as long as it was black. Ford focused on speeding vehicles through the assembly lines as fast as possible. Japan's production and output were slower than their competitors, like Ford, but it took Japan half the time and cost to come up with new models as their competitors.