Word: bronco
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...versa. But a five-month investigation by TIME of Ford documents, which the company prepared for investigators and government lawyers, shows Ford's engineers were wrestling with the stability and handling of the Explorer even before it hit the market in 1990-as a sibling for the notorious bucking Bronco II, which cost the company approximately $2.4 billion in damage settlements. Previously undisclosed memos and e-mails show the extent to which the engineers were juggling decisions about the Explorer's suspension systems, tire pressure, weight and steering characteristics, plus its height and width, all of which could factor into...
...Explorer's platform dates back to the late 1970s, when Ford created a new line of light trucks-code-named Yuma-that came to include the Ranger pickup and the now infamous Bronco II. Both vehicles used a unique "Twin I-Beam" suspension that raised their center of gravity by placing crisscrossing beams atop one another between the front tires...
...company marketed I-Beam directly to consumers, since it had been used on the original and highly popular Bronco. But the Bronco II became a nightmare for Ford, which by the late 1980s faced more than 800 lawsuits that stemmed from accidents involving rollovers. That didn't deter Ford from using the same suspension on the new Explorer, which allowed the automaker to build the SUV on the same assembly lines as the Ranger pickup...
Though comparisons are being drawn, the Blake-Bakley case is not quite the O.J. Simpson saga. The glamour quotient is low, and no high-speed white Ford Bronco chase has hypnotized the nation. Last week the police were only calling Blake a witness, though they have not ruled him out as a suspect. They dusted him for gunpowder traces the night of the crime and found none. Still, there is some incredulity at the split-second timing of events in the tale he tells...
That is certainly a focal point of Tab Turner's case. The Little Rock, Ark., lawyer has spent a decade investigating SUV rollovers, and has beaten Ford three times in court. He won a $25 million verdict in 1995 that involved the Bronco II, forerunner of the 1990s Explorers. Over the past eight years, he has taken more than 30 depositions from Ford and Firestone employees on the engineering and development history of the Explorer and the tires that were designed for it. A top Ford official, on videotape, admitted to Turner that Wilderness AT tires were susceptible to failure...