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This is a tough one...my wife does software engineering for an automotive subvendor. Things like bluetooth connectivity and recognizing address books of cell phones is not very easy to do, even though there are standards for such things. My original gripe was that the Mercedes A Class hatchback I drove as a rental in Europe would be able to read the phone list right off of my blue tooth phone - but my Camaro can not. Her response was to the effect that part of the reason a Mercedes costs more is because they do the work (and therefore have to pay their employees) to actually be able to work with all of the different variations of phones and address books out there. It can be done, it just takes time, and time is $$$. Those $$$ then come out of our pockets.
I'm curious how well Sync works for the Fords. Actually, I was surprised that the Camaro had any voice recognition capabilities. I didn't find that out until I read the manual.
It's true on another front too. I once interviewed someone who did computer numerical analysis for one of the higher end car manufacturers. He studied the shape of the defrost vents on the dash...I can't believe that a car company would pay a subcontractor to do such a study...but, you get what you pay for, I guess.
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