As far as long lasting ability, American designers/companies tend to go for cars that have higher horsepower, or beefier engines or what have you, this plays into the shorter lifespan of engines/other parts. High powered cars simply break down faster.
Honestly though you’d be surprised how the level of “durability” has evened out in recent years. A lot of people still favor foreign cars, but now it’s more because of quality and gas mileage (that and the general feeling that foreign cars are better). All of the domestic cars I’ve bought that were reasonably new held up pretty well.
Lastly, don’t think that foreign manufacturers are immune to problems. My brother works for a major foreign car company as an engineer. One of their cornerstone cars had MAJOR transmission issues for the last few years, and they have NO clue why (I won’t say exactly what or which company as my brother told me in confidence). His job for most of the last few years was to take the transmissions out and check them, they were testing whether it would cost them less to issue the recall or just pay the people that complain.