During the last two decades, it was reasonable to assume that foreign automobiles have a higher quality than American vehicles, but more recently, their image has ameliorated. This improved image is due to their perseverance and effectiveness in taking action. For example, General Motors has paid off 8.4 billion dollars of government loans five years early which certainly improved consumer confidence in their company. Also, as shown by a study from J.D. Power and Associates, American vehicles ranked higher in durability and reliability than Japanese vehicles due in large part to the major product recall from Toyota. This certainly demonstrates that the position of a company can improve from the betterment of the strengths of a company, but also the addition of weaknesses of competitors; therefore, in order to accurately predict whether or not a company can be successful in the future, we must not only look at a business’ own SWOT analysis, but also the SWOT analysis of competitors.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/17/american-car-quality-tops_n_616592.html