Question: Are European Cars Really More Reliable In Europe Than In North America?

Junked 1978 Peugeot 504 Ever since I began writing about cars for various online publications, one argument keeps showing up in readers' comments: Many European cars that are regarded by Americans as totally flaky (e.g., Fiats, anything French) are considered quite reliable in their home continent. The subtext of this argument is generally "You can't let Americans have anything nice, because they'll destroy it like a bunch of chimpanzees given unlimited meth and armed with claw hammers." Meanwhile, the American readers of these comments usually fulminate about Yurpeans being a bunch of public-transit communists who don't understand cars. This age-old debate— which I suspect appeared for the first time in an automotive BBS, circa 1979— surfaced again in the comments of yesterday's Cadillac Catera Junkyard Find. What's going on here?
One big difference between Western Europe and the USA is that it's easy and cheap to have a car on this side of the Atlantic; most states will give you a driver's license if you fail to kill anyone during the driving test, registration fees and taxes are low, and you can find a beater car that runs (after a fashion) for next to nothing. The American economy is so dependent on everyone being able to hop in the primered-out, space-saver-spare-shod Lumina and careen down the nearest highway that the idea of putting serious hurdles in the path of car ownership is unthinkable. In Europe… well, it's not like that. How do these differences lead to such disparity in perceived reliability of, say, the Peugeot 504, which manages to survive hundreds of thousands of kilometers on African roads with little maintenance while its American counterparts fell apart in a matter of months?
As far as I can tell, the primary arguments in this ancient debate boil down to these:
1. Americans are idiots. Americans, their automotive sensibilities ruined after generations of exposure to such primitive monstrosities as the Dodge Dart, became accustomed to ignoring all maintenance requirements on vehicles. They don't change the oil, they get electrical problems fixed by their drunken, inbred, duct-tape-wielding cousins… and when the poor abused machine fails, they shoot it full of holes with their ever-handy firearms and buy another one.
2. Europeans are idiots. Europeans, accustomed to legions of nanny-state bureaucrats dictating their every life decision, follow the ridiculously onerous maintenance requirements of their spindly-ass cars to the letter, handing over what little loot they may have held onto after taxes to their mechanics. When some Bosch or Lucas or Magneti Marelli component fails for the fifth time in a year, this is seen as a normal operating expense.
3. Americans drive a lot more. Everyone seems to agree on this point. Does this mean that Americans simply use a tougher yardstick to measure the number of trouble-free miles a car needs to be considered reliable?
4. American roads suck. Also, American weather sucks. The idea here is that European cars are too fragile/sophisticated (depending on your point of view) to handle the Bangladeshi-grade asphalt roads of the United States, and that North Dakota winters and Death Valley summers would kill any vehicle more complex than a Model T.
I don't know why I bother to list those arguments, because we've all suffered through the endless flame wars. Perhaps we can analyze this question with logic and wisdom instead of passion and brickbats. Or not. What do you think?