Who are the best engineers in the world?

Americans for software engineering, English for specialist engineering, French and Japanese for consumer engineering, Swiss for precision manufacturing... but overall the Germans. They are the world's leading export nation on the back of their engineering skills. Siemens, BMW and Mercedes are just three well known brands of quality engineering products, but there is a depth of engineering know-how and tradition that no other nation rivals.

Historically the British led the charge, but by the turn of the 2oth Century the Germans established their ascendancy. Through mass-production techniques America overtook Britain and Germany , but together with the British failed to adapt to the higher quality mass production engineering techniques of the Japanese. Switzerland did adapt, but with a small domestic market and high costs has not been able to broaden its manufacturing base as wide as other leading nations. The UK also concentrated on the top end markets, and only the French, Italians and Germans really adapted to the changes. The French and Italians suffered from economic mismanagement (but still are skillful engineers) whilst the Germans meanwhile just kept steaming on producing superb engineering, and Two World Wars and a massive exodus of talent, know-how and secrets to the USA from Germany hasn't suppressed them.

F1 is a great place to test engineering excellence and it is open to all to compete, so it is no surprise the leading engines are from the UK, France, Germany and Italy and the body is mostly from the UK and Italy.

uk.answers.yahoo.com -- nihoatridge