I was reading the latest issue of Automobile magazine yesterday and
came across a column blasting American auto companies for providing
much better cars to the European market than they provide to the
American market.  One of their prime examples was the Focus (totally
different car in Europe).

What really caught my eye was the assertion that Ford engineering no
longer has the expertise to design an automatic transmission in-house.
I recall Nasser eliminated thousands of engineering jobs.  My personal
experience in engineering was that companies eliminate engineering
jobs with no concern for whether or not they retain critical skills.
Management's answer is to hire an outside company to provide needed
skills.  Of course, that means hiring someone with far less skill in a
specialized  technical area compared to the in-house engineer.  This
may have something to do with the poor reliability of certain
transmissions as reported often in this newsgroup.

Guess that's why we pay top management so much money.  They have to
make these really difficult decisions that jeopardize the future of
the business.

End of rant!