People have lost count of the number of recalls by Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) this year. The figure reached 104 last month. In the third quarter, Ford issued 60% of American car company recalls. In total, its recalls this year involve millions of vehicles. It sold just over 2 million new vehicles in 2024, which makes the recall level even more staggering.
Ford has tried to fight its car quality issues with the myth that vehicles it has recalled were built years ago. “We are not satisfied with the current level of recalls or the number of vehicles impacted. We are working to reduce the cost of these recalls,” Chief Operating Officer Kuman Galhorta recently said. Most of the recent ones are “tied to vehicles engineered several years ago before we made all the robust process changes across our industrial system.” That is not true. Recently, the company recalled a number of its new Mach-E vehicles for door lock problems caused by low batteries.
Additionally, in the most recent J.D. Power U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study (VDS), Ford ranked below the industry average. Josh Halliburton, the company’s Executive Director of Quality, said its numbers were getting better. This is like saying a grade of C is better than a grade of D.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the new recall was for approximately 625,000 vehicles in the United States due to seatbelt and rear-view camera problems. “The seatbelt recall affects 332,778 Ford Mustang vehicles, while the camera display issue recall covers 291,901 F-250, F-350 and F-450 super duty trucks, according to NHTSA notices,” Reuters reports. The F-Series pickups are absolutely key to Ford’s future. These pickups are about 37% of its total annual new vehicle sales in the U.S.
Worse by the Day
The recalls have at least four effects. The first is that customers have the inconvenience of going to dealers and waiting for the repairs. While there are no direct costs to the customers, there are the hours of traveling and sitting while Ford fixes its own problems.
The dealer has to placate a customer who is unhappy about the recall. This is the same customer the dealer wants to sell a new car or truck. With Ford’s recall record, that is a hard sell.
The third victim of the recalls is Ford itself. Its warranty-related write-offs over the past two years have been well into the hundreds of millions of dollars, which has undermined Ford’s earnings.
The fourth victim is Ford’s shareholders. They have invested in a car company that produces the lowest quality products in its sector of the economy.
Ford spends a great deal of time talking about things like its Essential Economy Summit led by Ford CEO Jim Farley, its new headquarters at Henry Ford II World Center, and its overhaul of the battered Detroit’s Michigan Central, which took six years and cost almost $1 billion. Each of these is a huge waste of time and talent. Ford has an eroding quality problem that is getting worse by the day.
Ford Stock Price Prediction and Forecast 2025-2030
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