Ford's Quality Fix Is In
Ford’s President of the Americas Mark “MKF” Fields (sorry, the joke is just too funny to let go of) is responding to recent allegations of slipping quality by Consumer Reports and JD Power, by telling Bloomberg that
We’re largely back on track on some of these early issues
He’s referring specifically to issues with the MyFordTouch system that has been the central issue in the recent quality flap, and the fix for that isn’t particularly complicated.
Ford has reworked software on MyFordTouch to prevent random rebooting that had afflicted the system, said Sue Cischke, vice president of environmental and safety engineering. The touch controls also have been recalibrated to respond more quickly to a driver’s touch, she said.
Ford is encouraging dealers to spend as much as 40 minutes training drivers to use the system.
“If you’re trying to figure it out as you’re driving, obviously that’s not a good thing to do,” Cischke said.
Ford’s problem, it turns out, isn’t so much a product quality problem as a customer quality problem… because why would consumers need 40 minutes of training on a system Ford insists they are “demanding” (despite, it must be pointed out, the government’s murmured objections)? Unfortunately for Ford, Michael Karesh argues convincingly that Ford’s quality problems go beyond the MyFordTouch issues… but because its quality was so weak before Mulally took over, at least Ford (and the “PR friendly” auto media) can continue to claim “improvement.”
More by Edward Niedermeyer
Comments
Join the conversation
Edward imples a long history of piss poor quality, but I have to disagree. My Sable station car is 19 years old and spent its entire life outside. Only now is there a hint of rust over the right rear wheel. Sure, I have had some repairs, including a rusted engine subframe. But the engine and trans are still original, as is much of the car, including the engine driven accessories, wheel bearings, ECU, etc. Now one car is not a sample size, but like German reliability issues, I believe Ford's reliability issues have always been exaggerated. My LSC was great, too. No Malaise era stuff here. I did not like the MyFordTouch user interface. Ok, it was a rental, but I did not feel it was intuitive. I did get the feeling that with practice it would become much easier, but I had to ask myself what is wrong with regular controls...and I'm not a Luddite.
4500 miles on my 2011 GT with no problems other than gear whine, which the guys at evolution performance tell me is not uncommon on the mt82. I have done my share of first and second gear smokies. BTW I changed the fluid just because at 3000 miles. Nullo, any TSB on the gear whine? I changed the rear fluid too. So far its been a real good car.
We have a good dealer here in South Jersey(Holman) where I bought it. Guess it couldnt hurt. Thanks.
that's what happen when you hire microsoft to design your software...