You cannot accuse Steve Miller, Delphi chief executive, of being prone to understatement.

Last week, as the Michigan-based auto parts manufacturer sought the relative safety of Chapter 11 bankruptcy amid rising pension costs, its boss declared: "Delphi is simply a flashpoint, a test case, for all the economic and social trends that are on a collision course in our country and around the globe . . . We are witnessing the slow, agonising death of defined benefits as industrial compensation policy."