Last Ford I Will Ever Purchase

First the independent company will find a problem with your tires,
they want to sell you new ones. Second the tire company does not know
Fords warranty. Third the tire company wants you to haggle with Ford
so they will not have to replace the tires. Fourth I find it hard to
believe three tires have seperated belts. Even the cheapest tires
going do not have that high of a failure rate. Finally the original
Ford/Firestone recall was pure bs. Total driver neglegance.

The tires were manufactured in China and contain lead. Don't lick
them. You'll die.

This is the reason that people no longer want to purchase American
brand "assembled" vehicles any more... because they do not stand by
their warrenty's.

What cost would it be to them to replace these tires under the bumper
to bumper warrenty? Monetarily next to nothing but it will cost them a
customer which should be more important!

I have an Impala and my knobs on the radio were loose...took it right
into a Chevy dealer and they installed a whole new radio/CD player
because they could not just fix the knobs. No cost to me at all
because it fell under my warrenty.

I am a diehard Ford fan (guess its all that "hayseededness!") I've had
4 Fords since I started driving (2 Mustangs and 2 trucks) and they are
FAR less problems than the Chrysler products my hubby insists on
buying.

But I've also been to EVERY Ford Dealership in a 4 county radius of my
home and you'd be amazed at the difference in the service from shop to
shop. 2 have GREAT sales staffs and terrible service departments. 3
have awful sales and great service and one I won't touch at all
because EVERYTHING they do seems to cost twice as much as the others.
It's amazing that there is such a wide variance and its essentially
the same cars on every lot!

So what do I do? I bought my cars at the dealerships I liked and had
them serviced at the dealerships that had good service. Ford's
warranty is a National database, so no matter where you take it to get
serviced, they can pull up your car's history by it's VIN. There is
nothing that obligates you to tolerate bad service just because you
got your car there.

Another thing I found that helped was getting in contact with my
salesman or the sales manager if they still won't work it out. The
sales people WANT to see you come back. If the service dept. is
screwing that up for them, they need to know about it.

Don't write off Ford yet, you just might not have gotten the right car
for you, but the isuse with the tires should definitely be addressed.
Please let us know what the outcome is.

Lynn,

I can understand your frustration with the situation and I agree that
Ford should try to help facilitate it to a reasonable conclusion.

However, American made products are not bad. You can get bad products
from any region on the globe. And while Ford is an American company,
Conti is not. Conti is a European company (German), and it is they
who seem to have a problem based upon your description of the issue.
Conti tires are on many makes and models. Would you no longer buy a
Toyota if conti tires were on some of their cars?

Again, I completely sympathize with you and hope that one or both of
them work to make it right for you.

Best of luck,
Chris

Just curious. Is your 95 Mustang an automatic, and how does it handle?
Our standard was a complete disaster. If it snowed, we had to back it
up the hill we live on in order to go anywhere. It just wouldn't go in
a straight line unless the road was dry. Not only was it impossible to
drive in bad weather, but anything that could possibly go wrong with a
car went wrong with ours. It was recalled for so many different
things, I can't even remember them all. One recall was so major that
it took a chunk of money off the trade in value. It even had a
defective battery. I love Mustangs and have owned three of them, but
the 95 was by far the worst car we ever owned. Was yours ever
recalled?

Is an automatic and it also is terrible in the snow. I got stranded
with it once because it started snowing earlier than predicted. I
couldn't get it moving at all and ended up parking it a Lowe's for
three days. The parking lot at Lowe's was downhill so it was the only
place I could get it into. That's why we told our mechanic last night
that we need at least one of our cars back soon.

As far as the recalls, I only remember one but my husband did a lot of
performance work on it which might have negated the recalls. It's a
GT but he put a Cobra motor in it. It has a performance transmission
and he's done work to the suspension. It's actually a little better
in the snow than it originally was.

Overall, the handling in the bad weather is the only issue I have with
it besides the fact that's it's very low to the ground (he lowered it)
and difficult for me to get in and out of because of my hips.

Have your specific tires been recalled? You posted a link about
recalled tires in your letter, but you didn't say if your tires have
been recalled.

I agree with what he (Bill) said. Take it back with the tire
specialist's report. Good luck.

Lynn B.,
Sorry to hear about your problem.
If it were me I'd take it back to the dealership with what your Tire
and Front End Specialist found in writing and plan not to leave until
the issue is addresed.
Good luck and let us know how the whole issue shakes out.
BillR.