Fordward into Fiasco

When Cars Fail, They Do It with Style

Let us now praise famous automakers—though in Ford’s case, the praise comes with a recall notice.

Ford Motor Company, once the divine forge of American mechanical greatness and Henry Ford’s Model T dream of independence-on-wheels, has officially achieved the sort of ignoble record that would make even a Yugoslavian Zastava blush. As of June 2025, the company has issued 88 separate safety recalls—yes, that’s right, eighty-eight—more than any automaker has managed in an entire year. Ford is not just leading the pack; it’s barreling off a cliff while honking the horn to alert us all to the spectacle.

What was once a company synonymous with industrial genius and middle-class empowerment is now the wheezing punchline of America’s great mechanical joke: the car that’s never quite finished even after it leaves the factory.

They say cars are now “computers on wheels.” But that’s only half right. They’re glitchy computers on wheels, prone to software-induced seizures, digital dementia, and the occasional existential crisis. Your Ford may not start, may not stop, and—according to several drivers—it may not even let you into it without jumper cables and divine intervention.

And the response from the suits in Dearborn? A bowl of corporate alphabet soup ladled out by a man named Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s COO and chief patron saint of public-relations euphemisms. According to Galhotra, this deluge of recalls is actually a sign of “going the extra mile to protect customers.” One must admire the linguistic jiu-jitsu required to transform an avalanche of defects into a virtuous strategy. If Ford gets any more protective, it might start sending customers helmets with each lease agreement.

Of the 88 recalls, at least 33 were the result of a company audit, proving that if you stare into the abyss of your own engineering long enough, the abyss will recall you. These weren’t just fussy issues like a sun visor that droops or an interior light that flickers like a haunted Victorian chandelier. We’re talking about fuel pumps failing, engines stalling, and, in one deliciously Orwellian twist, electric Mustang Mach-Es whose batteries die and trap children inside the car like some dystopian Easter egg hunt.

Yes, the Mach-E—Ford’s sleek, silent chariot into the EV future—has a 12-volt battery so underwhelming that it requires jumper cables to unlock the damn doors. Somewhere in the halls of hell, Henry Ford is doing 60 RPMs of regret.

But wait, there’s more. Ford also recalled nearly half a million Explorers from the 2016–2017 model years because bits of trim—literal shards of plastic afterthought—were falling off and creating road hazards. It’s as if the car, out of sheer embarrassment, is trying to shed its own skin.

Not to be outdone, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had to remind Ford that leaving broken trim flapping in the wind isn’t exactly “best practices.” Apparently, the idea of plastic shrapnel flying off at 70 mph required a regulatory nudge.

But Ford, ever magnanimous, insists it’s changing. They’ve doubled their team of safety experts. They’ve hired a quality czar. They’ve tied 70% of executive bonuses to quality metrics, which in Detroit is like tying a parachute to a burning piano and calling it aviation.

Let’s be clear: This is not a company under siege by unforeseeable catastrophes. It is a company getting blindsided by its own PowerPoint slides. The issue isn’t just complexity—it’s hubris. The blind belief that throwing more sensors and software into a steel husk will somehow make it less fallible. But adding tech to a flawed car is like putting lipstick on a malfunctioning airbag. When it explodes, it still hurts.

One might be tempted to find hope in statements from local dealers who say “things are improving.” But that’s like the Titanic’s head waiter announcing the dessert menu after the iceberg. “Yes, the ship is splitting in half, but our chocolate soufflé has never been fluffier.”

In January, Ford even forked over $65 million to settle allegations that it delayed a recall of 600,000 vehicles with defective rearview cameras. Think about that: we now need surveillance just to back up safely, and even that doesn’t work. No wonder Ford agreed to spend another $45 million just to track its own problems. They’ve essentially outsourced their memory to a pile of spreadsheets and PR interns.

So what does it mean when one of the Big Three can no longer make cars that stay glued together or log into their own operating systems? It means we’re witnessing not just a manufacturing collapse but a philosophical one. The car was once a symbol of autonomy. Now it’s a fragile, Wi-Fi-dependent riddle box on wheels that may or may not betray you at 70 miles an hour.

To borrow from H.L. Mencken, Ford’s current trajectory is the logical result of trying to please too many people with too little conviction and too much circuitry. And to paraphrase George Carlin, these aren’t cars—they’re rolling tech support calls waiting to happen.

So buckle up. Or don’t. The buckle might be on the recall list.