No carmaker is perfect, despite us all having our own sensibilities in regards to which rides we stand by. Chevy fans are hardly polite when it comes to pinpointing the flaws of Fords, especially when it comes to the fight between Mustang and Camaro. In the same respect, members of “Ford families” are raised not to be caught dead in a Silverado, as no other truck but the F150 is “Built Ford Tough.”
One argument many die-hard Chevrolet fanatics will make is that Ford has actually recalled more cars than any other company in American automotive history. Now it’s true that the Blue Oval brand has actually sold more cars than any other specific nameplate stateside. However, the sales figures are disproportionate to the number of cars that Ford has asked buyers to bring back into the dealer compared to other carmakers.
The largest recall Ford ever made involved every car manufactured by the company between 1976 and 1980. This was a dark time for most car manufacturers, as emissions standards forced companies to make smaller, less powerful engines and a gas crisis made getting behind the wheel more boring than ever. But a defect in transmissions produced by the company over that period made it so that many Fords simply would not stay in park and would instead slip into reverse, resulting in more than 6,000 accidents, 1,700 injuries and 98 deaths.
In 1996, Ford issued another apology, to roughly 14 million drivers who drove trucks and large cars produced by the company, including the massively popular Bronco and Explorer SUVs. This time around, a faulty ignition switch used to activate cruise control began bursting into flames across the country. Replacing each switch at roughly $20 a pop cost the company an estimated $280 million.
What’s most embarrassing about the previous recall was that it came just on the heels of another recall that same year, where almost 9 million cars were recalled because of faulty ignition switches that had also started causing Ford’s to set on fire, this time on a car’s steering column.
Were you affected by these recalls, and do you think Ford can be forgiven for the company’s past sins