Word: tiring
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...rollovers are cheered by the split, because it will enable them to pit one company against the other in court. Accidents involving Firestone-equipped Explorers have accounted for most of the at least 174 deaths and more than 700 injuries that prompted Firestone to recall its 15-in. SUV tires last year. Ford faces hundreds of lawsuits that seek damages totaling more than $590 million, and the company is bracing for a report on the tire failures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Moreover, Representative Billy Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican, plans to hold hearings this summer...
...Investigators in Florida, which is leading the inquiry on behalf of all 50 state attorneys general, believe that Ford and Firestone share blame. Says attorney general Bob Butterworth: "If they already knew they had these problems, why did they put an inferior tire on this vehicle? The problem you have here is lawyers and the marketing department overruled the safety recommendations of engineers...
...that's pretty much it for points of agreement. Ford insists that Explorers fitted with Goodyear tires have experienced far fewer tread problems than those equipped with Firestones. Firestone retorts that the same tire that shreds on an Explorer holds up just fine on a Ford Ranger. General Motors last week described the safety of the Wilderness AT tires it puts on pickups as "excellent"-although the No. 1 automaker said it was planning to switch to the Bridgestone brand for some of its vehicles this summer. (Bridgestone owns Firestone...
...about the Explorer's stability during emergency handling procedures. After a test-track trial in April 1989-one year before the Explorer reached showrooms billed as a rugged and reliable family vehicle-a report noted that the SUV prototype "demonstrated a rollover response ... with a number of tire, tire-pressure [and] suspension configurations." Another report noted that the Explorer's "relatively high engine position ... prevents further significant improvement in the Stability Index [a measure of resistance to tipping] without extensive suspension, frame and sheet-metal revisions," which the company rejected...
...Ford made a curious choice with regard to the Explorer's tires. After putting the SUV through the Consumers Union test, engineer Roger Stornant wrote that the results yielded "a high confidence of passing CU with [Firestone's] P225 tires and less confidence on the [Firestone] P235." Ford chose the larger P235 anyway. Marketed first as the ATX and then as the Wilderness AT, the P235 became the tire that Firestone later recalled...