Ford’s US-market Focus, which endured quality glitches and a number of high profile recalls in its first few years on the market, has been hit by another big recall, soon after the current model line finally made the influential magazine Consumer Reports’ ‘recommended’ cars list.
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According to Reuters, Ford on Thursday said that it was urging owners of about 671,000 Focus sedans to bring the cars into local dealerships for replacement of a component linked to chronic engine stalling problems.
The cars affected, from the [troublesome] 2000 and 2001 model years and sold in Canada and Mexico as well as the United States, have already been subject to an embarrassing total of 10 recalls by US federal safety regulators, the report said.
But Ford spokesman Glenn Ray told Reuters that the sputtering engines, which the company is blaming on the corrosive effect of dirt or sludge build-up in a fuel delivery module designed in Europe, was not something the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would officially record as a quality problem or recall.
“It’s a product improvement program. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the quality of the fuel delivery module. It doesn’t fail instantaneously or suddenly,” Ray told Reuters, adding: “The root cause of the problem we’ve discovered in North America progressively over time is the variability and unpredictability of the gasoline-petrol standards in North America.”
Ray also told Reuters that customers affected by the engine problem would get an extended 10-year vehicle warranty on the fuel replacement part and he stressed that no similar problems had been reported with 2002 and 2003 models of the Focus.
