Ford Territory floor mat recall

Ford Australia is recalling almost 5000 Territory floor mats because they can potentially jam the accelerator.

The floor mat in question is a genuine Ford accessory -- a black carpet mat with silver 'Territory' lettering available since June 2009 -- and is not standard on the car. Ford also offers rubber floor mats, also black with silver lettering, but these are not the subject of the recall.

Because Ford does not have a list of customer contact details -- as it would with a new vehicle purchase -- it is urging anyone that may have bought this particular floor mat as an accessory to return it to a dealer to be exchanged for another type.

No other floor mats are affected, the company says.

Ford says there had been two reported instances where the floor mat had jammed the accelerator earlier this year, the first one occurring in February and a second one in March.

In the first incident the driver shifted the car into neutral to slow the vehicle and eventually come to a stop.

The March incident was television news. A woman driving a 2009 Ford Territory claimed its accelerator became stuck while driving through Melbourne's Burnley Tunnel.

She eventually brought the Territory's speed down from the posted 80km/h to approximately 10km/h at which point she disembarked from the vehicle.

The Territory then continued a short distance before bumping into a concrete barrier.

When the Carsales Network asked Ford Australia why it took up to three months to respond after that incident, Ford spokesman Todd Nissen said: "When we get reports from customers we want to look into them thoroughly before making a decision. We looked into it and determined we should take action."

He confirmed that the Territory incident in the Burnley tunnel was "the second incident, another driver had an incident a couple of weeks earlier".

Ford says it will be more difficult to track down the affected floor mats because they were sold separately as accessories.

"Because the floor mats were sold separately from the car, we don't have a database of customers," Nissen said. "We've put ads in newspapers and with the help of our dealers we are working to make sure people are aware."

The Ford Territory floor mat recall is similar to a floor mat-related recall by Toyota North America in the lead-up to its faulty accelerator pedal fiasco, which eventually saw eight million Toyotas recalled there earlier this year.

But Nissen told a Sydney newspaper last week the problem was "nowhere near the scale and nature" of the Toyota problem.

"We don't see it as an issue at all," he said. "There are no safety or performance issues at all; it's a problem with the mat... We see it that the reputation of the brand is still strong.

"There's no issue with the pedals, the brake or the accelerator, the problem is with the mats getting stuck or bunched up."

Ford has asked 4990 owners of the faulty mats to return to their local dealer for a redesigned mat supplied free of charge.