Ford top brass focusing on warranty cost blowouts

Ford’s most senior executives are intent on rectifying a slide in the company’s quality control that has seen warranty costs increase off the back of a brace of large-scale recalls.

In a quarterly earnings call in the US last week, Ford CEO Jim Farley admitted that the company is “hampered” by recalls at present.

“This affects our cost, but more importantly, it falls short on our most fundamental commitment to our customers,” he was quoted by Automotive News as saying.

“We have more work to do in this space,” Farley said.

This admission was backed up by the company’s global head of internal combustion vehicles, Kumar Galhotra, who told a conference last week: “These issues simply shouldn’t happen. Fixing quality is our No. 1 priority as a company.”

According to AN, Galhotra said that to get ahead of problems, Ford is more closely monitoring social media to see what customers are complaining about. Ford has also hired a quality expert from researcher JD Power and is also increasing engineering, manufacturing and supplier involvement.

As of late July, Ford has issued 44 recalls in the US covering approximately 6.7 million vehicles.

Recent high-level issues for Ford included a recall on the launch of the Spanish-built, Australian-sold Escape PHEV to fix a potential fire risk, as well as dealing with a US federal investigation into valvetrain failure issues related to the 2.7-litre petrol engine in the US-market Bronco SUV.

Closer to home, Ford Australia has released a statement in the wake of new owners complaining of excessive tailshaft vibration in new 2022 Ford Rangers, saying it is “aware of a small number of vehicles” that have exhibited “some harshness or vibration at certain times while driving”.

“As part of the normal pre-delivery process, our dealers are conducting road tests of customer vehicles and working with our technical team to resolve any concerns before they are delivered to customers,” said the statement.

The issue, which will not lead to a safety recall, appears to be isolated to a batch of tailshafts assigned to V6 diesel-powered Rangers. It’s been reported that rebalancing the tailshaft rectifies the problem.

Ford Australia’s recall record over the last 12 months has been notably small, with just two issued so far in 2022. This contrasts with eight in 2020 and four in 2021.

The first relates to a potential oil leak on certain Fiesta and Focus models sold between 2019 and 2022.

The second relates to a manufacturing issue that affected 2018-2020 Mustangs, in which the reversing camera display, reversing lights and various driver aids could stop working.

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