FORD

Let’s talk about Firestone & Ford today and who is to blame – or are they both to blame?

This happened last July and August. There were 194 people killed in Ford Explorer turnovers. Two companies that had been partners for nearly a century, Ford & Firestone, fell into a bitter dispute.

Before a separate hearing cast September 11, with top executives, there were disputes about whether or not the companies should share the responsibility of 194 people who died in roll over crashes involving both Ford Explorers & Firestone tires. Senator Holdings, a Democrat from South Carolina, said that they were “like two cats tied by their tails over a clothesline, clawing at each other.”

“16,000 Explorers have rolled over,” said Lange of Firestone, “ and the tire failure was involved in a very small percentage of the turnovers. His written statement pointed out that at least 10% of the reports noted that the Explorer would have to be looked at as part of the problem in the crashes.” Mr. Lange also said that the company might have found the source of the problem that made some of the Explorers turn over. The problems with the treads Firestone believes partly resulted from a design specific to other cars combined both as a process & stability. “The design treatment involved both,” Lange added.

Meanwhile, members of the committee of senators repeatedly asked, “do you need more money to analyze safety trends?” “Never have one of you come to me and said ‘Look, we’ve got to increase the budget of our advocate here, ’ ” said Senator John McCain of Arizona.

Dr. Barkley and Rodney Slater, Secretary of Transport, the two witnesses, agreed with him, but said they were planning to take $1.8 Million out of other safety programs and spend it on investigating Firestone tires. They did not really reply what programs would be cut.

Dr Sue Barley (an osteopath) dodged a question from Senator Bill First, asking her to “evaluate information qualitatively” looking at the significance of reports of problems rather than their number. Senator First is a medical doctor – a surgeon. Dr. Barley addressed him as a fellow scientist, and said a mathematical system was needed to determine when an issue reached a threshold at which an investigation is required.

Members of the committee repeatedly asked if the highway agency needed more money to analyze safety trends. Slater (Secretary of Transportation), said his department wanted the authority to require auto makers and related companies to report on foreign recalls, but he acknowledged under questioning that the information could also be obtained from foreign governments thought the US does not normally trade information with highway safety regulators in other countries. The reason he said is a lack of protocol by which the government could swap proprietary information without fear of public release.

Senator Holling expressed surprise that commercial attackees in American embassies in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Malaysia, three countries where Ford replaced Firestone tires on Explorers had not informed the highway safety agency.

Dr. Barley said that her office had known of those actions combined with the trouble reports here, it would have triggered an investigation sooner. Instead the tip off for the Federal government came from a radio station, she said. Several committee members voiced enthusiasm for giving the highway agency greater powers of democracy of information including data on service providers under warranty, which is the type of data that Ford eventually used to expose the problem with Firestone tires.

Several members called for enacting criminal penalties for companies that failed to report safety problems, a position that Ford & Firestone endorsed. Mr. Lange, of Firestone, said that in hindsight his own company had not looked at its own data properly.

He added that the root of the problem might be Ford’s recommendation to inflate tires on Explorers to a relatively low range 26 to 30 points.

Firestone approved that range when the large heavy vehicle FORD went on the market a decade ago. But look back at he add, Firestone should probably have considered that more carefully because under inflated tires heat up rapidly and heat can cause damage. Consumers also run these tires at pressures lower than it is recommended he said.

Ford CEO said “I listened in disbelief”.

FOR FORD PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE JACQUES NASSER THE DAMAGE CONTROL EFFORT HAS BECOME NEARLY A FULL TIME JOB THAT PROMISES TO MAKE OR BREAK HIS CAREER.

HE PARTICIPATES IN EACH DAILY ISSUES MEETING EVEN WHEN HE IS OUT OF TOWN, HE ARRIVES ARMED WITH INFORMATION GLEAMED FROM OUTSIDE HIS USUAL REPORTING CHANNELS. HE HAS TAKEN TO CALLING DEALERS, SUPPLIERS AND EVEN OWNERS OF FORD VEHICLES WHO HAVE WRITTEN OR EMAILED HIM.

HE HAS CALLED FORDS OWN CUSTOMER HOTLINE AND THOSE OF BRIDGESTONE/FIRESTONE POSING AS A CUSTOMER. HE GOES ONLINE TO SEE WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT FORD IN INFORMED CHAT ROOMS.

ALREADY NASSER HAS TAKEN SOME BIG STEPS TO FASTEN THE REPLACEMENT OF THE 6.5 MILLION RECALLED FIRESTONE TIRES NOW LINKED TO REPORT OF SEVERAL HUNDRED DEATH AND MORE THAN 250 INJURIES WHEN TIRE PEALED OFF OF FORD EXPLORER SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND OTHER FORD LIGHT TRUCKS.

HE HAS BOUGHT IN COMPETITORS OF BRIDGESTONE/FIRESTONE TO SELL REPLACEMENT TIRES BOUGHT HIS MODELS FOR SOME OF THEM TO WORK WITH AND “SHUT” DOWN THREE FORD PLANTS THAT MAKE NEW EXPLORERS AND OTHER LIGHT TRUCKS IN ORDER TO FREE UP MORE TIME.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

FEBRUARY 3, 2001

Expert Says Car Weight Was Key in Tire Failures

By KEITH BRADSHER

DETROIT, Feb. 2 — Firestone tires have been failing on Ford Explorer sport utility vehicles because of a combination of factors, especially the vehicle's weight, according to a report issued today by a professor retained by Bridgestone/Firestone Inc.

Sanjay Govindjee, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, said in his report that tire inflation pressure, hot weather and vehicle speed had all played a role in causing a fraction of 1 percent of Firestone tires to lose their treads during highway driving. But he said that the most important single factor in determining how quickly cracks spread through the tires was how much weight they were carrying.

"The variable that seems to be most important is the load on the tire — that is, the weight of the vehicle itself," Mr. Govindjee said in a conference call with reporters .

Mr. Govindjee, an expert on how rubber and other elastic substances behave when subjected to stresses, declined to discuss whether the Firestone tires had been the right tires for the Explorer, sticking to the results of laboratory and computer analyses while offering few opinions.

Bridgestone/Firestone, a unit of the Bridgestone Corporation of Japan, recalled 6.5 million tires on Aug. 9 after the Ford Motor Company determined that the tires had an above-average rate of failures causing deaths and injuries, especially since 1997. Federal regulators had received unconfirmed reports of 148 deaths linked to Firestone tires by Dec. 6, the last time regulators released a tally.

Ken Zino, a Ford spokesman, said today that the problem was that the tires were unusually sensitive to the loads on them, and not that the Explorer was too heavy for its tires. "We have studied that, and there's nothing unusual in the Explorer as far as loads," he said.

The completely redesigned 2002 Ford Explorer, which goes on sale later this month, uses larger tires that are capable of carrying more weight. Ford also announced in November that it would begin providing customers with more information on how much weight their vehicles could safely carry.

Current owners' manuals in Explorers suggest customers have their empty vehicles weighed at weighing stations along highways or at shipping companies. By subtracting this number from the recommended maximum weight of the vehicle when fully loaded, found on the inside of the pillar behind the driver's door, the payload can be calculated. The typical Explorer can safely carry slightly less weight than a Ford Taurus sedan, according to Ford and tests by Consumer Reports magazine.

Ford manufactures the Explorer by bolting a large, heavy passenger compartment onto an underbody originally designed for the Ford Ranger pickup truck, a much lighter vehicle.

Mr. Govindjee's report did not address the stability of the Explorer, an area outside his expertise.

A computer analysis last fall by The New York Times of a federal database of all fatal crashes nationwide found that 97 percent of all tire- related deaths in Explorers during the 1990's also involved rollovers, compared with 84 percent for all other sport utility vehicles and 38 percent in cars. Tire problems were a factor in roughly one-tenth of the rollover deaths in Explorers during the 1990's, an unusually high proportion at a time when tire-related deaths were a tiny and dwindling share of traffic deaths.

A mention of warranty claims in Mr. Govindjee's report attracted considerable attention today among personal injury lawyers and consumer activists. Mr. Govindjee said that the rate of warranty claims for some recalled Firestone tires was the same as for some Firestone tires that had not been recalled.

The brief statement on warranty claims in the middle of the highly technical report today prompted Joan Claybrook, the president of Public Citizen, the consumer safety group in Washington, to call for a wider recall.

Firestone has recalled all ATX tires of the P235/75R15 size, but only recalled Wilderness AT tires of this size that were made in Decatur, Ill. Firestone has not recalled Wilderness tires made at its factories in Joliet, Ill., Quebec and Wilson, N.C. The ATX tires have been made since 1990 and the Wilderness tires since 1996.

Mr. Govindjee said in his report that the frequency of warranty claims for Wilderness tires varied little by where they were made. All of them had warranty rates that were somewhat above the average for all Firestone tires made in the late 1990's, but considerably below the average for all Firestone tires made in the early 1990's. The Wilderness tires had much lower warranty rates than ATX tires produced since 1996.

Greer Tidwell, Firestone's director of manufacturing, said that Wilderness tires had a better design than ATX tires. He said a recall of all Wilderness tires would be unnecessary.

Firestone paid for Mr. Govindjee's report and provided him with the laboratory results that he used for his computer analyses. But Mr. Govindjee said in the telephone interview that Firestone had not tried to steer his research.

A table in today's report showed that rubber tests from Firestone's own laboratory produced results that were consistently a little less favorable to the company than an independent laboratory's tests on identical rubber. Mr. Govindjee attributed the discrepancy to differences in test methods.

The report today comes as lawyers continue to file tire-related lawsuits. A few are suing automakers other than Ford, and representing clients in hot-weather places outside the United States.

Firestone and General Motors were sued on Wednesday in Nashville by the family of three citizens of Mexico , one of them pregnant, who died in a crash in Mexico a year ago. The lawsuit asserted that the family's 1997 Chevrolet Suburban crashed because a Firestone tire failed. Firestone and G.M. officials said that they had not yet seen the lawsuit, which was reported today by NashvillePost.com, a business news Web site.