I have been reading your column for many years and have noted the frequency with which the problem of poor quality European components crops up, particularly with respect to front suspension and speed humps. May I just take a little of your time to recount some of my Father's experiences spent at Ford Motor Company. My Father started working for Ford UK in 1948 fitting the electrical systems into V8 Pilots. He progressed over the years to the position of Inspector on the line, before transferring into Quality Control and becoming Chief Technician in the Metals Testing Laboratory in the PTA building at Dagenham. A delegation from Jaguar was touring the complex, visited at the laboratory and stopped to watch my father visually checking a sample of brake discs. He was throwing a large number of these into the defect basket and one of the delegation stooped in and picked one out. After examining it he passed it to my father and asked why he had rejected it. My father took the disc and pointed out some small pitting in the surface. The delegate turned to him and said, “We would not worry about that. We put anything on at Jaguar.” My father simply replied saying, “Well, at Ford Motor Company we don't.” Then, In the 1970s, Ford US decided to create a Ford of Europe by amalgamating all the separate groupings within the continent. The two major groups were UK and West Germany and the inevitable turf wars broke out. One of these involved specifications, where the UK’s were much higher than the German's. It came down to the bottom line and suppliers. After much argy-bargy, the UK lost and so the West German specifications were adopted. My father was mortified but was forced to accept the lower standards and pass sample batches that he would previously have failed.