Ford hired or rehired around 350 veteran engineers and technical specialists after its AI quality-control systems consistently failed to catch defects that experienced technicians routinely caught. The strategy worked — Ford topped the JD Power 2026 Initial Quality Study for the first time in years by combining veteran engineers' expertise with AI-generated insights. The automaker's expensive pivot reveals a fundamental limitation in current AI: it can accelerate human expertise but cannot yet replace domain knowledge accumulated over decades in complex manufacturing.