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The Metro engine is small, cheap, and comes with the car, so why complicate it?
I have a friend that only pays cash to buy the cheapest new American cars he can find and beats the bag out of them. If he gets less than 300k miles out of them before transmission or engine failure, he considers them junk (and these are the cheapest and smallest of the domestic cars). His Cavalier blew a head gasket last summer and he gave it to the gas station he stopped at. Car had 315k. He could have fixed it, but figured that was good enough (especially where it was trashed from being overloaded with weight, used to pull stubborn cable out of the ground, and had been sliced full of holes from a load of rebar that fell off a truck on the highway in front of him).
I think that a great reason for much of Toyota's reputation for reliability is that the cars are so boring that the people who drive them don't abuse them. Reliability is also a little bit a matter of perception—some GM and Toyota cars, identical outside of the bodies and both built in the NUMMI plant, have different ratings, with the GM cars rated worse for reliability. Because of Toyota's rep, they tend to get away with more (like the sludge engine failures of a few years ago).
The domestics made some crap and there are still a few lousy cars they make, but they've made some cars that will take a beating I dare any Eurotrash to try to match (first-hand experience with 70-80's muscle cars) and most of their new cars are as good (and often more interesting or attractive) than the japanese. I was a die-hard Subaru guy, but I'd have to be paid to drive the ugly, boring, overweight garbage they put out now. Were I forced to buy a new car, I'd have no problem going domestic over Japanese. Hell, my Mazda 3 has plenty of Ford in it and, boring it may be, it's a good car. Almost 100k (Ford 2.3 with Mazda top end) and it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all.
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