by Record Ford Recalls: A Sign of Problems or a New Strategy?
At the beginning of the new year, automakers traditionally boast about record sales. While Ford has not yet published its results for 2025, the company has already entered other statistical records – for the number of vehicle recalls. However, the company itself insists that this situation is a sign not of deterioration, but of an improvement in its approach to quality.
Here are the key facts of the situation:
The Scale of the Record
In 2025, Ford initiated 153 recall campaigns, affecting nearly 13 million vehicles. This figure is not just a record – it is almost double the previous anti-record of 77 recalls set by General Motors in 2014. It is important to note that this statistic may still increase slightly, as the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data is published only up to December 23.
At first glance, such numbers indicate serious problems for the brand. However, Ford offers a different interpretation, presenting this not as panic, but as an overly meticulous “cleanup” and a new level of transparency.
Transparency Instead of Silence
According to the company, the surge in recalls is not related to a sudden deterioration in vehicle quality, but to the determination to no longer hide problems. Ford doubled the size of its safety team, expanded testing, conducted a software audit, and accelerated fault detection and correction processes. The goal is to identify defects before they turn into lawsuits, fires, or viral videos on the internet.
“I would like consumers to know that we stand behind our products,” said Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s Chief Operating Officer. “Our initial quality has improved significantly this year, and if something goes wrong with their car, I want them to know we will act quickly to take care of it.”
Software Issues
Software plays a key role in this situation. About 40 recalls were essentially re-updates after Ford realized it had no reliable way to confirm the successful installation of previous fixes. That is, the company recalled its own fixes to ensure their correctness.
There are signs that this “thorough cleanup” strategy is starting to yield results. Ford reports a decrease in warranty service costs, which usually only happens when cars break down less frequently.
“Our warranty costs are going down,” said Galhotra, “and that is obviously directly related to the improvement in the initial quality of the cars we sell, the improvement in repair costs and their reduction for vehicles already in customers’ possession.”
The company’s management claims that the initial quality of vehicles produced in 2025 is among the best in the brand’s history. Consumer Reports magazine, for the first time in many years, moved Ford into the upper half of its reliability rankings. J.D. Power data also showed improvement, although Ford overall still remains below average.
Overloaded Service Centers
However, this does not mean that customers and dealers are thrilled. As one dealer explained, service areas are overloaded with recall work, and Ford pays less for it than regular customers pay for scheduled maintenance. Sometimes new cars cannot even be delivered to buyers because they require fixes first.
Thus, Ford finds itself in an ambiguous situation. The company is loudly doing the right thing instead of quietly doing nothing. Such honesty does not look very attractive in the raw numbers today, but may prove to be a healthier strategy in the long run. The company’s approach can be viewed as preventive medicine for the vehicle fleet: it is better to actively seek and treat potential illnesses, even if it temporarily spoils the statistics, than to wait for serious complications. The success of this strategy will be measured not by the number of press releases about recalls, but by customer trust and a steady decrease in real problems on the roads in the coming years.
