Word: forde
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...thus with a sense of relief mixed with anger that Valdes learned last week that Firestone, a part of Japan's Bridgestone Corp., had voluntarily recalled 6.5 million of its most widely used tires. The action hit Firestone and Ford where they live--in the automaker's best-selling models. Included in the recall are Firestone Radial ATX and ATX II tires, which are standard equipment on Ford's hot Ranger pickups. Also included are the Wilderness AT tires that Firestone makes in Decatur, Ill., for the Mercury Mountaineer and the Ford Explorer, the No. 1 suv in America. Firestone...
...huge recall is scheduled to begin in the South and take up to 18 months to complete nationwide. But nervous motorists from all points of the compass have flooded Ford and Firestone dealerships with requests-cum-demands for new tires, immediately. Many will be turned away, at least for now, until production gears up. Meanwhile, Ford and Firestone issued conflicting instructions for inflating the recalled tires. While Ford recommended a pressure of 26-to-30 p.s.i., Firestone insisted on 30 p.s.i. "It just burns you up," says Sue Gorski, a Chicago dental assistant who drives a '98 Explorer. "It feels...
Injured motorists or their families have brought more than 100 suits against Ford and Firestone since 1992, including at least 10 complaints about tread separation that the companies have settled. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) had been hearing complaints about the tires since 1991 but didn't act until last May, when the numbers spiked following an investigative report by TV station KHOU in Houston. Says Jon Goldberg, director of crisis management for the Edelman Worldwide p.r. firm: "As the evidence mounted, they [Firestone] could have moved much more quickly to take action...
...lights flashed in the Middle East and South America last summer when treads began to peel off Ford Explorers sold in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Ford initially blamed the problem on the tendency of some Saudi drivers to underinflate their tires to get better traction when driving across the desert. But that scarcely explained the rash of similar failures on the other side of the globe in desert-free Venezuela...
...Ford grew increasingly alarmed last year when similar failures cropped up in the U.S. Southwest. Working through Arizona dealers, the company collected tires from 200 Explorer owners. Ford and Firestone then X-rayed and sliced up the tires but could identify no defect. In the meantime, Ford quietly recalled vehicles from Venezuelan and Persian Gulf markets and replaced 40,000 to 60,000 high-mileage Firestone tires with those made by Goodyear. "You would have thought that they [Firestone] would have got the message," says a Ford official, in a none too subtle hint that the tiremaker should have addressed...