Ford Recalling More Vehicles in North America
The Blue Oval issues recall notices for some late-model trucks and SUVs.
The year 2017 has been somewhat of a challenge for Ford Motor Company to work its way through. The automaker has announced a corporate restructuring, has suffered from a substantial loss of market value, and has found itself issuing numerous recalls for a variety of vehicles. The recalls for its cars were large enough to affect nearly half a million cars and trucks. Now the automaker has found itself issuing yet even more recalls for its trucks—namely the F-series, the Super Duty, and the Explorer. Today, federal safety compliance failures with the vehicles have been acknowledged for structural issues.
The first of the two announced safety compliance recalls is about the driver’s seat in the F-150, the Explorer, and the Super Duty. The driver's seat back frame in affected vehicles may be inadequately welded by federal standards. The under-performing welds may fail to restrain the driver in a crash, which could potentially increase the likelihood of injury in an accident. All of the affected vehicles were built between December of 2016 and February of 2017. A total of 2,418 vehicles in North America qualify.
The second safety compliance recall is for 2015–2017 model year F-150s and 2017 model year F-series trucks (the F-250 to the F-550 Super Duty models, specifically) with Ford aftermarket chrome door handle covers. The handle covers were accessories from Ford dealerships. As with the seat weld recall, the door handle covers do not comply with federal motor vehicle safety standards. The specific problem that caused the recalls is that the handle covers may experience inertial loads in a crash that may cause release in a side impact and increase the opportunity for injury. Ford was able to identify 551 North American vehicles that were fitted with the aftermarket covers.
While safety recalls are bad, Ford can at least take some comfort that the relative size of the recalls is far smaller than its March recall of 441,000 North American vehicles.
