No, during the 70's and part of the early 80's they were terrible quality.

But what the Japanese makers did was they analyzed the failures and rolled the findings back into the manufacturing line so that they continuously improved the product. After quite some time at this, they took the "quality built" mantle for themselves.

My father, mid to late 70's, worked as an auto-mechanic for a local Datsun dealer (Datsun is the company we know today as Nissan). Datsun corporate wanted every failed part on every car repaired returned to them for analysis as to why it failed. The other Japanese brands all did the same.

Japanese cars from 1945-1970 were pretty bad. It took a while.