That may be true, Mike, but the early Japanese models to enter the US were…pretty close to crap.
My brother had the misfortune to own a Datsun SPL-310 (or 311?), made in 1967, and that car was essentially a total disaster. Nobody could ever figure out why the engine would crank, but not start, if the temperature was below ~45 degrees. The water leaks were so bad that the passenger’s legs (mine, usually) would be totally soaked if you drove during a rain storm. Despite several requests to seal the leak (apparently from the base of the windshield), the car leaked atrociously until the day that my brother dumped it.
The convertible top was a bit too tight, thus leading to a struggle every time that the top was put up. The tonneau cover was so small that it could not be attached.
Everything on the car rusted very quickly, but the winner of the oxidation race was the chrome. The bumpers were totally rusted within a little more than a year.
But–the most ridiculous problem concerned the air filter. The engine had twin side-draft carbs, and there was so little clearance between the air cleaner housing and the inner fender that it was not possible to remove the top of the air cleaner housing in order to replace the air filter! The only way to remove the air cleaner housing was to disconnect the carbs from the intake manifold. Whoever released a design like that had to be either totally incompetent or absolutely unconcerned with customer satisfaction.
Also, Datsun was giving/selling dealership franchises to anyone at that point.
The dealership where that Datsun was bought was really a used car lot, owned by two brothers who certainly resembled a couple of Mafioso types, both in appearance and in their attitude toward customer service. There was no service department! If you brought a car back to them because of a problem, they would take it to the Gulf gas station about a block away, where it would sit for days and then be returned without the problem being rectified. The guys at the Gulf station admitted to us that they had not been provided with Datsun repair manuals and they clearly had little interest in trying to put things right with these little rolling automotive disasters.
Put it all together, and you had the formula for major problems with your new 1967 Datsun.