We certainly had an infrastructure with a lot of spaghetti code keeping it together, and now we have a desire for one fully integrated enterprise.

In the end, SAP did come back with a counteroffer that was a very close, competitive counter, but we [had] already made our decision. They were not as competitive as they could have been in the initial rounds.

It was a consensus vote from the selection team, and that selection team looked at functionality, ease of implementation and flexibility -- in addition to TCO. While functionality was very close between the two products, ease of implementation and flexibility was won fairly-handedly by Oracle.

Looking back on it now, I don't see how we had the desire and the determination to keep going back because we kept getting knocked down, knocked down, knocked down,'' said Tony Glover, who joined the team late in 1983 and stayed until 1996.

Our desire is to get the most economy that we can out of a given vehicle with the smallest motors and smallest battery pack that we can.

Forbid us something, and that thing we desire