Thanks Moggi

That was an earful. But very informative.
More so on the subject of rendering than modeling.
However the answer to my question was in the text.
Essentially, what it says is:

"Choose your renderer first according to your specific
needs. Then use the modeler with the best connectivity
to that specific renderer. If movie quality animation is
not your concern but rather photorealistic images for
still images; then Mental Ray is an outstanding renderer
and Maya has integral connectivity to that tool."

That is why they would be using Maya for advertisement
quality images derived from process based design tools
in the automotive industry.

Say Moggi, now that the pdf file works fine, and given that
it is much better than the very long text you pasted in,
would you mind editing out that huge mass of text so that readers can have better access to the rest of the thread?