They require repairs.
Even if these are small and non-critical, nowadays car owners are lazy and just want to drive after pouring and changing all the necessary fluids.
BS detected, at least about the "Germany" part.
They have no protection of their car market. It's just they don't want to buy cars with mediocre steering and braking capabilities (Chrysler Seebring, for ****'s sake).
But germans are perfectly fine with buying cars that are japanese, french, romanian (Dacia), korean (Kia, Hyundai, korean Chevy), provided they have any advantages over the german cars. And, to be honest, it's hard to get advantage over german cars, at least in europe. Japanese cars sell due to their reliability, korean ones due to their great quality/price ratio (at least here in Europe).
At the moment, at least until american Ford, GM and Chrysler work seriously on quality and reliability (at least the parts are cheap, but they have to be imported over the Atlantic), steering (rear axle in Mustang -- oh please) and braking (there are still some american cars sold with brake drums, WTF?), american cars are only for the passionate.
As a funny fact (and to troll you guys a bit with your belief in american GM's awesomeness 
) some time ago GM was selling rebranded american cars in europe with a bit of redesigned exterior. Nowadays it's the other way around -- many popular GM models sold in the US (C and D-segment) are rebranded Opels with some visual redesigns.
Aveo and Cruze (already mentioned here) are mostly korean in origin (with platform for Cruze coming from Opel).
I'm not saying it's bad, just don't get overhyped about the state US automotive industry. At the moment it's in a really bad shape, sorry. The sooner and more people realize it, the better it will be for the automakers to push necessary change. One single (even serious, but still) f***up by Toyota doesn't automatically make The Big Three awesome again.