Practically all of Japans industry was destroyed in the war, MAcArthur rebuilt the Japanese auto industry from scratch, consequently, the Japanese were using much more modern plants, and equipment, than most of the US plants, many of which were built in the 1920's. I remember a comparison between the Honda plant in Ohio and the Jeep plant in the same state, Honda was building almost twice as many vehicles with just a little over half the workers. At one point in the Jeep assembly line, the unfinished chassis had to be hand dragged across an alley into another building and put on a second line, 40 guys were doing nothing all day but dragging chassis.Also the Honda went on the assembly line with only one or two options from standard, the Jeep had every single item lined in as an option(we finally did away with that bullshit in the late 80's) You could order a Jeep with power windows and no power steering etc, a nightmare.