That started happening ten years ago when Saturn started stealing all of the initial quality awards from Honda. And GM feels confident in light of their 100,000 mile warranty.
The pendulum is swinging the other way. Can anyone guess where the Japanese learned their quality ethic from? Shortly after WWII, an American quality expert named Charles Deming went to Japan for several years and set up their industry in the right direction. The pedulum starting coming back in the 80's and 90's when a Japanese quality expert named Genichi Taguchi came to the US to help us out with our quality. Saturn used a lot of his stuff, and guys like me are coming out of college with advanced knowledge of Taguchi principles.