I am not sure if its only North American cars that do the rip off, but yes they do break down more.
I had a single older woman come to see me balling her eye's out she had gone too the dealer to have something small fixed. The bill came to 1200.00 and she was crying cause it cleared out her savings.
I looked at the bill, saw that they did the full works, even stuff that she could have put off. She called the dealer spoke to the manager and got a 400- discount (had to charge for some parts)
I was disguested that they would take advantage of someone like that, and I bet the knew what they were doing.
Yep, my tax dollars helping this industry .....