Have you driven a Ford lately?

My first Ford was an ‘86 escort. There were some really likeable things about it, but also just cheapness and shortcuts I hated when I worked on it. For all the issues it slowly developed, it handled well, got great gas mileage, and the 5spd felt better in the hand than it should have. But I avoided fords most of my life because of a cheapness of build quality it had.

But then I owned a Jeep, actually two, and a few volvos. All that shifted my worldview a bit. I test drove a few fords and have been surprised by how some of their models just seem better put together than others. Seats in a Ford 500 seem fully, solidly anchored to the floor of the car, much like a toyota. Sit in a Fusion, and it feels like the seat sits on one rail, like an old Isuzu. Dash in an escape? Weird but functional. Dash in an explorer? The stereo buttons look like a fisher-price toy. Hard to know what you’re getting.

2018 F150. The smoothest, quietest vehicle ive ever owned. Amazing engine - power, economy, tows stumps out of the ground. Yet the weatherstripping is thin and it’s starting to whistle, until i rub honda shin-etsu grease on it. 10 speed transmission shifts as well or better than my lexus, IF it has LG red in it. Misses gears and drops to neutral WHILE DRIVING without it. Sync 3 is great, until it isn’t. Tomorrow I’ve got an interstate road trip. I can take the truck or the lexus. I’ll probably take the truck. It admittedly, has the worst oem headlights I’ve ever owned. There was no upside to that. I gutted them and fit projectors into them.

Coming from volvos, with 23 computerized module on the CANBUS, the ford definitely seems to have taken that tech from Volvo. Plug forscan in, and about two dozen computerized modules raise their hand during roll call.

I’m surprised @svtrit experienced more repairs with the GM - I would have expected GM to be the best, followed by Ford and followed by Ram. … instead it looks like he saw Ram as the most reliable (minus rust), followed by Ford followed by GM. GM seems to have a huge boom in my neck of the woods right now - more new Chevy/GMs on the road than the others, with the new Tundras and their noticeable taillights also seeming to grow in population. They remind me resurrected caddy or lincoln tails. Pretty cool.

Anyway, if I needed another, I’d consider another F150, though I feel like the Ram should get a look-see in mild hybrid form, but after owning 2 chrysler minivans and 2 jeep grand cherokees, Ram ownership for long term seems to defy all sensible logic. GMC has the only trustworthy service department in my neck of the woods. But my 150 runs well, and I have it dialed in the way I like with features, suspension and brakes. Hard to beat the 21mpg in a truck. Trying to hold off on any vehicle purchases for as long as I can. We’d like to move, perhaps next year. As expensive as vehicles are, a car purchase would seriously cripple home budgets right now.
 
Quite a few guys on the Mustang forum are having this problem. You have to pull the headliner down, unbolt the light, and then pry it off the body, as it's stuck on with double-sided trim adhesive tape. Seems likely that you would break the light getting it off, but not sure. As for the headliner, I need to look more closely to see if there are still traces of the white stain, as I immediately hit it with some cleaner and a towel. I acted in haste... Wish now I hadn't cleaned it. I'm still pondering if I want to take this on myself, or take it to Ford. It will depend on whether or not this is covered by the Ford warranty I just bought.
:(
 
My first Ford was a 1998 Ford Contour...brand new.. also was my last...It was the worst car I have ever owned...Spend more time at the dealer getting it repaired then driving it..Dumped the car after about a year and a half....
 
My first Ford was a 1998 Ford Contour...brand new.. also was my last...It was the worst car I have ever owned...Spend more time at the dealer getting it repaired then driving it..Dumped the car after about a year and a half....
If it was a V6, those cars were tons of fun to drive for what they were.

I do remember repairs being pretty difficult
 

"It takes us 25 per cent more engineers to do the same work statements as our competitors," Mr Farley said on the Cars & Culture with Jason Stein podcast.
Having worked with some of those "engineers", I'd say he was being very kind in his remarks. However, when the corporate culture is paper shuffling, quality will suffer, and trust me paper shuffling and team meetings are what fills most of an engineers day at Ford from what Iv'e seen.
 
This was my last Ford I've driven. :D
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"Have you driven a Ford lately?"

Yep. Every day since 2005.
I started driving around roughly the same time, less than a year earlier, and come to think of it the only days I haven't driven one I was too sick to do anything, so I could count it on one hand. Been looking at that stupid oval all my life really. Most people in my family aren't even really car people, I'm basically the only one who would go on this website, but Ranger/Explorer ownership has been prolific in my family. Even if the bed is off and sitting in the yard, there's basically a minimum of one of these trucks at most of my relatives houses.
 
So far no issues that seem to get a lot of attention on the forum have stricken my Hybrid Maverick. There are recalls but so far mine has been trouble free, and is a quite remarkable truck for $27K with lots of features. By now my 2018 F-150 had already been back 3 times for recalls in the first 8 months.
Have a 22 Maverick, almost a year old, 2,000 miles.
Took it in for 2 recalls, 2 TSBs, and 2 warranty items.

All were insignificant except a bad 12 volt battery and software update.

It's a cheap truck made during a pandemic with questionable parts, cheap labor, and made in Mexico.

That being said, i really like this truck.
 
Have a 22 Maverick, almost a year old, 2,000 miles.
Took it in for 2 recalls, 2 TSBs, and 2 warranty items.

All were insignificant except a bad 12 volt battery and software update.

It's a cheap truck made during a pandemic with questionable parts, cheap labor, and made in Mexico.

That being said, i really like this truck.
You need to drive that thing. Have you changed the oil .
 
A CPO 2021 Mach 1 was on my short list of cars I was looking at to replace my 2014 M235i; but the dealer was totally unrealistic regarding the price.
 
My most recent Ford's driven extensively were an '09 Taurus, '11 Taurus, and my deceased '15 Taurus. The 09 while the most boring was the most comfortable, easy to enter and exit, and best put together with the only problem being rust in the rear wheel well on the right side and the horrible CD players. The '11 Taurus was more fun but a downgrade in comfort and ease of entering and exiting yet had excellent gauges. My deceased '15 had no personality thanks to the electric steering and road worse despite having smaller rim sizes and felt slower off the line despite having a power increase and got no better mileage despite being rated as such and the gauges seemed cheap. I think this reflected Ford's cheapening of quality over those years which plagues them today. I do miss her though. Didn't even reach 60k miles. She had been flawless before her demise. (That darn Impala)
 
I just turned 20K in a 2021 Ranger. I chose it because the Tacoma is overpriced, Frontier was getting old and the Colorado looked troublesome (I will NEVER own a vehicle that disables cylinders for fuel economy). The Ranger is hardly a new model either, with lots of exposure in foreign countries where it is basically the world version of the F-150. The 2.3 Ecoboost and 10-speed transmission have been trouble-free. No recalls other than some issues with the child-seat mount in back -- I took the back seat out, so no worries.

I did make a point of getting minimal electronic/computerized doodads. It is a truck, not an entertainment center.
 
I feel like Ford has said "they're working on quality" for the last 45 years.

Just ready any forum about the new Bronco. What a POS that vehicle is. And the majority of morons that bought it waited years and paid over MSRP.

Enjoy...
https://www.bronco6g.com/forum/forums/issues-repairs-warranty-tsb-recalls.118/

Bronco in its natural habitat... The back of a rollback.
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Drove a 220k plus Festiva today up to the airport and back. Wife drove the 180k plus Escape running errands. Just moved the 176k Focus around.. it's the only cursed one. Any vehicle is as good as you make it.. except Chrysler products those are just terrible 😂
 
I have owned several Ford F-150's and have had great luck. A friend owns a 2017 Ford F-150 5.0 that he purchased brand new and at about 70,000 miles he had lots of filings in his oil and the engine had spun a bearing. He had the engine replaced with another used 5.0 engine. The repair shop had to remove the front end to replace the engine. The replacement engine had a leaking camshaft seal. Sometimes things just happen and in this case my buddy had a run of bad luck. Ford just uses the consumer as a guinea pig however GM and Dodge and all the others operate the same way.
 
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