[hcoles]

Me - recently retired MSME, mechanical design, cooling and heat transfer.

Let's assume you will be or want to be an individual contributor for a period of time (5-15+ years). In addition assume you may need to move to a different country, state or city for family reasons/etc. Regardless of the industry you might be working in, you want to remain easily employable. If you look at the open ME jobs there is a trend - it is almost a requirement that you have experience with one or more "CAD" systems. I'd say these fall into a few categories: mechanical CAD, CFD or FEA. In some cases the higher end systems can be used to do all three.

Many of us "old" engineers started out being interested in automotive and have extensive hands-on experience. The fact that you have hands-on skills is a major advantage but is not everything. A proposed general statement - if you are passionate about designing things and making them work, there are many industries, including automotive, where these skills will always be required. Basic design skill comes with practice as in 10-15 years of practice. You need to have designed parts and put them out in the field and dealt with resolving field "issues" before you can say you are an experienced design engineer.

You seem to be headed for some sort of design type career for at least the short term. Get as much seat time as you can with one of the popular mechanical CAD systems (e.g. SolidWorks, UX, etc.) sign up for projects that involve heat transfer and get seat time with software systems that handle those types of problems. I wouldn't worry too much about the industry, you may start by designing kitchen appliances. In my opinion if you like designing things you can be happy in many different industries. In addition - study and get your P.E. licence. This puts you miles ahead when you are 60 and looking for a job.

I hope this makes some sense.