The Toyota Corolla seems like the easy and obvious answer. Toyota has been teaching the world how to build cheap, efficient, reliable compact cars, using for decades, basically every car company has attempted to copy the Corolla formula to varying levels of success. Basically every car company have attempted to copy ‘the Toyota Way’ manufacturing methods, often just interpreted as just in time manufacturing though in reality it’s more complex than that, again to varying levels of success. The Corolla on it’s own is the best selling car of all time, with more than double the sales of the next best VW Beetle.
Cheap, efficient, reliable, and practical. Put those four together, and you’ve got a recipe for success in the automotive world. It’s tough to argue that anyone’s done it better than Toyota — save maybe the Honda Super Cub.