Your Ford Could Catch On Fire

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 26, 11:54AM EST

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Your Ford Could Catch On Fire — © jetcityimage / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

Ford just recalled 634,000 vehicles. These were 2020-2023 Bronco Sport and Escape SUVs with a 3-cylinder, 1.5-liter engine. Some of the same vehicles were recalled in April. That is an ugly track record for the two SUVs. Reuters reports as many as 54 of these vehicles have already had reports of engines that caught on fire. The number seems low–except for the people who own them.

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Ford has been dogged by poor manufacturing to the extent that it may have hurt sales. The Wall Street Journal published a brutal takedown of Ford in August. It was titled “At Ford, Quality Is Now Problem 1”. The article was extremely long and extremely damning. Ford needs to rush to find solutions. The authors of the WSJ story wrote, “The problems also raise the stakes for the 119-year-old company as it tries to snatch new customers interested in EVs.” For the time being, Ford is the recall king of the U.S. car industry.

Ford has already fumbled its EV launches. Its Mustang Mach-E has been greeted with high demand. This was almost certainly dampened when Ford unexpectedly raised the price for the crossover by $3,000 to $8,000. Ford management did not anticipate supply chain trouble and “rapidly evolving market conditions.” The second part of the excuse could not be vaguer.

Ford’s best shot at a major EV success is its F-150 Lightning. The F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in America for four decades. At least six million remain on the road. It would be hard to find a customer base this large. Ford suddenly raised the Lightning price by as much as $8,000. It could not have invented another way to undermine customer demand, even if Ford management tried its hardest.

Ford management, particularly Executive Chairman William Clay Ford, who has had a mediocre track record since he took over as the head of the company on January 1, 1999, understands that customers only have so much patience. His name is on the company’s front door and on every vehicle it sells. Huge recalls erode confidence in car manufacturers as much or more than any other event. Even more than when a company suddenly raises prices.

Lurking in the backs of the minds of some Ford owners is whether their Fords are safe or not. It makes for a tough job keeping loyal customers, or winning new ones.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.