I studied mechanical engineering and we had to spend more than 3 months in the shop building stuff. This made a huge difference in my understanding of issues when I worked in production management for a while.

So I think if you run a car company you should at least like cars, know how they work to some degree and have worked at a car company for a while. When I came to the US in the 90s and rented a Buick I wondered if the CEO of that company even had tried that car once. It was so bad that I couldn't imagine that anybody who knows a little about cars would have allowed this car to ship.