Ford Sets A Record For Most Recalls Ever Issued In A Single Year

No automaker has ever issued more recalls in a single year than Ford did last year. The company logged 153 recall campaigns covering nearly 13 million vehicles in the U.S., almost doubling the previous record set by General Motors more than a decade ago.

Take the figure at face value, and the number suggests a manufacturer struggling to keep basic quality under control. Ford’s leadership, however, argues the opposite—that the spike reflects a more aggressive approach to identifying and fixing problems rather than a decline in how its vehicles are built. We are firmly in the doublespeak era, folks.

Internally, Ford says it has spent the past year expanding its safety and quality infrastructure. The company doubled the size of its safety team, increased testing, and leaned more heavily on audits to uncover issues earlier in a vehicle’s life cycle.

According to Ford, the goal has been to uncover defects quickly, even when they are minor, rather than risk them becoming larger safety or legal problems later.

“I would like the consumers to know that we stand behind our products,” Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s chief operating officer, told The Detroit News. “Our initial quality has improved substantially this year, and if something does go wrong with their vehicle, I want them to know that we will act promptly to take care of it.”

A large portion of the recall volume stems from software-related issues, which now touch nearly every system in modern vehicles. Ford acknowledged that roughly 40 of its recall campaigns were reissued updates, triggered after the company realized it lacked a reliable way to confirm that earlier software fixes had been properly installed.

The company reports that U.S. warranty costs are declining, a metric that typically moves in the opposite direction when vehicles are failing more often.

“Our warranty costs are going down,” Galhotra said, “and that’s obviously directly related to improving initial quality of the vehicles that we’re selling, and improving the cost of repairs, and lowering the repairs for vehicles already in customers’ hands.”

Ford also says initial quality scores for vehicles built in 2025 are among its strongest in recent years. Independent rankings show modest improvement as well, with Consumer Reports placing Ford back in the upper half of its reliability table and J.D. Power noting progress even though the brand remains below the industry average overall.

That said, the recall surge has not been painless. Dealers have shouldered the burden of the work, often filling service bays with recall repairs that pay substantially less than customer-funded jobs. In some cases, new vehicles have been held back from delivery until fixes are completed, frustrating retailers and buyers alike.

The raw numbers still look bad—and Ford knows they will for a while—but the automaker will need to hope the headline numbers don't substantially destroy consumer brand perception before the payoff from its renewed investment in quality control arrives.

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