Ford to recall 4.5 million more vehicles over leaky switches
October 14, 2009 by Alborz Fallah
When it rains, it pours. Toyota and its floor mats, GM and its brake issues, now it’s Ford’s turn to continue a decade long saga of recalls involving leaky cruise control switches that may cause vehicle fires.
The announcement today by Ford now puts the total number of cars recalled due to the issue at 16 million. U.S. government records show this to be twice the size of the second-largest U.S. recall (also Ford) in history.
This time around Ford is recalling about 1.1 million Windstar minivans made from 1995 to 2003 following “a small number of reports” of switch fires.
“Though extremely low, there was found to be some risk of an unattended fire resulting from a leaking switch in Windstar vehicles,” Ford said in a Statement last week.
Additionally Ford will also recall a further 3.4 million vehicles that have the cruise-control deactivation switch.
The additional vehicles, which Ford says don’t pose a safety risk include 1992-2003 built Excursion (diesel), F-Super Duty (diesel), Econoline, Explorer/Mountaineer, Ranger, and F53 Motorhome vehicles. According to the manufacturers, it’s fixing the issue in order “to address possible ongoing customer lack of confidence in vehicles with the switch“.
The original problem arose in 1998 and in 1999 Ford recalled around 279,000 Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car sedans built for the 1992 and 1993 to fix the leaking Texas Instrument made switches.
In the years that followed, five more recalls were issued for the same problem in 2005, 2006 and 2007 totaling over10 million vehicles.
Last year Ford recalled 225,000 of the same vehicles to redo the initial repair.
The current recall doesn’t affect any Ford vehicles sold in Australia.
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Mmmmm…. nice blue van. Where can I buy one?
So stylish.
Just waiting for the headline 10Million US cars have been recalled. Because Americans have just realised they own the ugliest cars in the known universe.
It’s a Ford Windstar. Very popular minivan in the US in 1990s. Went on sale in 1994 with a choice of 3.0L or 3.8L V6 engine. It had a base price of less than US$20,000 (by comparison, a Toyota Camry V6 at that time sold for US$22,000). The model lasted until 2003 (with various facelifts), before being superceded by the Freestar.
are there ANY fords in the US that haven’t been recalled at least once?
Is it just me or does the front of that “thing” look like an old Fiesta?
Nice update to the site!
Since this article only covers U.S. Fords, this does not surprise me. American cars have become ugly unreliable lemons since the ’70s. There are only few new American cars I admire from looks alone.