Vehicle Safety News

Expansion to Existing Recall for Fires Caused by Defective $21 Cruise Control Switch is Single Largest Recall in Ford's History

Ford Motor Co. announced an expansion to its largest-ever automotive recall by adding about 4.5 million vehicles to the recall over a faulty switch linked to hundreds of vehicle fires. The action, which comes in the face of an 18-month federal investigation, means the company has now called back more than 14 million vehicles in eight separate recalls over a 10-year period because of the problem. The cruise-control deactivation switches, made by Texas Instruments and sold for about $21, were installed in 16 million Ford vehicles over a decade before the automaker stopped using them in early 2003. The switches have been linked to at least 550 vehicle fires and 1,500 complaints.

Safety advocates have long urged Ford to take the step. The automaker resisted that step, arguing that it would continue to monitor the remaining vehicles with the switches, but recall them only if data showed a higher incidence of fires. The new recall includes nearly 1.1 million 1995-2003 Ford Windstar vans that were the subject of a government investigation, along with 3.4 million other vehicles, including about 1 million Explorers, 740,000 Econoline vans and 1.1 million Ford Super Duty trucks.

"Ford is making a safety-related defect determination for the Windstar vehicles," James Vondale, director of Ford's automotive safety office, said in the letter. "We have not made a safety-related defect determination for the other vehicles included in this recall, but are including them to avoid any future concerns related to a potential fire risk resulting from the Texas Instruments (switch) either from the agency or from our customers."

Learn more about Ford switch fire dangers and the legal rights of those injured in Ford vehicle switch fires.