Agreed, they probably are cheap garbage (I myself don't know, I haven't driven cars regularly in a while), but two things:

1. Manufacturing volume is really important in making cars. You need know-how, you need experts and ways to make things better and deliver incremental improvements, and that becomes a lot easier when you have higher volumes.

2. People don't have lots of cash to burn these days - quality is easy to sacrifice when you don't have the cash to pay up.