Honda
"In the 1970s, Honda cars were cheap and cheerful (and pretty nasty, I remember), but twenty years later they were associated with reliability and quality."
True story, may have mentioned it here already. Back in those same 70s, an acquaintance inherited a load of money and boughts a Rolls-Royce. He asked his wife if she wanted one too. No, she wanted one of those Honda Civics. She insisted...she got her way.
In the first year the Royce was in the garage for 7 months being fixed and waiting for parts (for a new car.) The little Honda just went on and on.
Four years later, the Royce was still unreliable and the Honda had done 40 000 miles plus with only routine servicing.
In the same period someone else bought a new Austin-Rover group vehicle which was also a Friday before bank holiday car (5 months off in first year.)
...but not all Japanese manufacturers were equal. A colleague's Datsun ran very reliably for three and a half years and then rusted beyond economic repair in a few months.
Now the relevance of this is that Honda actually involved itself in the UK and learned what were our special requirements (which is how they took over the motorcycle industry.) They were up against fat complacency, but although they have been moderately successful (and as a UK company too) they have not taken over the world. The Japanese manufacturer who got nearest that, with its fanatical approach to reliability, is Toyota.
The question is whether the part-Statist and part wild West Chinese economy is yet ready to do either of those things (as Orlowski is asking). Huawei seems to be involving itself in the UK rather as Honda did, but is it going to learn all the lessons of that in very short order?