There are some big, glaring omissions on their 2023 sheet. The 2022 sheet shows 53% for the Bronco, and I can’t imagine it would change that much over a single year.

 

Okay 55% I will believe. 18% sounds like they just toss a domestically produced motor or transmission(but not both) into a knockdown kits straight from a container ship.

 

Clearly I failed to make my point.

If one has chosen to purchase a foreign branded vehicle then that's all fine and good, I couldn't care less. But, if one has chosen to purchase a US branded vehicle then I feel as though it should be more American made. I fully intend to shop for a Hyundai and I fully expect that it'll be made from mostly Asian parts and I'm ok with that. Detroit no longer offers what I want and when they did, the didn't do it well.

 

Sadly, the auto manufacturers (any many other manufacturers) are beholding to the shareholders more than anything else. Every cent cut benefits the share price, So realize, the primary concern isn't customer satisfaction, quality, durability, etc. It is to extract the best quarterly report possible. That requires a delicate balance of cost vs quality. All that matters in the end is the price of the shares.

 

That’s true, but it also applies to the others with one noticeable exception. Tesla is a public company, but they are structured to give Elon Musk final control over just about everything.

Toyota and Honda are publicly-held companies. So is Hyundai/Kia, and they are collectively known to make some of the highest-quality metal on the road today. Toyota maximizes shareholder value by employing leadership committed to making a quality product, which drives repeat sales and encourages growth. I wish the Big 3 took the long view.

 

That’s true about the Asian cars. They tend to be more conservative when it comes to equipping them. They aren’t trying as hard to give a perception of luxury as US car companies. They do have the options of course, but I’ve always liked how easy it is to find a no nonsense Toyota or Honda actually in stock at dealers.

In many parts of the country all you can find on a truck lot are loaded and stripped models. Ford has 4 luxury trim levels, that’s crazy. They know that there are many customers out there who can’t bring themselves to “downgrade”.

I’d like to see our society lose it’s fascination with wealth and luxury. Sad thing is that there are so many buying the high end trucks, financing for 7, 8 even 10 years now just to show off. As long as I can get an XLT it doesn’t matter to me.

Like you though, I value quality above all else. Because of that a Ford may not be my next truck. And quality should not be confused with luxury. A Limited is built no better than an STX, even though one costs twice what the other does.

I would really like to see Ford go back to their motto that quality is job 1, and mean it.

 

My 2011 truck is the best example of this. In over 12 years of use and 125K miles, it's had one day in the shop to change the vent control actuator. I've had the hood up in the drive way to replace plugs and coils and to change the 4x4 shift motor, nothing else. My 2020 Explorer has been amazing mechanically but all of Ford's fickle buttons and electronics have been less reliable and has caused the car to spend a couple days in the shop already.

 

I wonder how much of that has to do with complexity rather than overall quality. Do the features that failed in your wife’s car even exist on your 2011?

I’ve always thought that many of the increasing reliability and quality problems have to do with how fast cars and trucks have changed. Toyota’s Prius of 20 years ago shows us complexity doesn’t have to be unreliable, but it can be a nightmare if not done right. I think Ford has been learning this the hard way over the last few years.

 

My 2015 went back to the dealer once. That was for an IWE noise, which turned out to be only a vacuum solenoid which was replaced. The OEM battery also failed at only 24 months, but I replaced it myself. Since then it's only been maintenance, all done in my driveway. Never an issue of any consequence.

Then as the generation ages there were next gen 5.0 issues, Sync4 issues, 10 speed auto issues, mysterious 2.7 stalling issues, trailer plug harnesses corroding and causing issues, sunroof mechanisms breaking, and probably some more of the common things that have been reported. But it's almost always the 2017 and up trucks that seem to reflect a lack of concern about the overall quality. Maybe I'm wrong, but I do spend a lot of my time here on the 2015-2020 board. And the 2021+ trucks don't seem to be doing any better.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems the further Ford gets from the Mulally years, the more QC has suffered.

 

Maybe. The Lightning I’m about to buy has 18,000 miles on it, and I’ve asked the salesman to get me its OASIS history when he has the chance.

Tesla has awful fit and finish issues, but their overall quality is great. I didn’t have any issues to speak of in the 42K I put on my Model 3, and my Model Y has been flawless for the first 29,000. I met up with an old acquaintance from AIT on a Tesla forum, and he has the highest-mile Model 3 that’s being tracked on the TeslaFi service. No issues beyond tires at 282,000 miles.

EV powertrains are a lot simpler, so I’d hope to see similar reliability out of the Lightning.

 

I agree... Having said that, Mulally came from the aerospace industry and their quality system AS9100 is probably second to none. Pretty sure Farley's and Hacketts (office furniture CEO) quality backgrounds are nill to none.

 

I believe Mulally also had the fortune of being at the helm toward the end of a lot of mature platforms' life span, a time at which most cars were fundamentally just refinement of previous versions and many of them long running products sold both here and overseas. Just take a look at the ford car timeline at the bottom of this page, look around 2006-2014. His aim was to consolidate platforms and cut lose any old platforms that wasn't worth investing in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Fusion_(Americas)

Fiesta: long tested in Europe
Focus: same
Fusion: same under Mondeo name
Taurus: killed off so no major changes on his watch
Panthers: killed off so no major changes on his watch
Mustang: it was all S197 on his watch, including the live rear axle

A similar theme can be seen on the truck/suv side

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Flex

Things started moving fast tech wise after he left.

 

Simple switches that control the third row seats and illuminated buttons on the steering wheel, none of which are new tech or revolutionary.

My Explorer limited is an amazing car with all kinds of doo dads and things that making a road trip quite pleasant. I'm glad I bought the 7yr / 100K ESP with a $100 deductible.

 

Many people are still driving vehicles with 100,000 to even 200,000 miles on them and they are still reliable daily drivers, I don't see an EV vehicle being able to dp this, replacing the battery is a major cost more so than an engine or transmission in a fossil fuel powered vehicle, the other problem is recharging time and recharging locations, It's not like you can keep a spare battery like people have gas in a can, I almost always have a can of gas in the back of my truck, I never need it but it is there if I should, that is almost physically impossible with a EV vehicle.

And yes they have become politicized became they are being pushed on us by politicians.

and lastly....I prefer to own a domestic made vehicle but the cost has pretty much made it so my 2011 F150 which I purchased used with just under 100,000 miles will be the last vehicle I will be able to afford.. as even newer used vehicle are not in my affordability range

 

I think you'd be surprised. I reconnected with an acquaintance I met back in AIT on a Tesla forum a couple of years ago. He bought a 2019 Model 3 around the same time I did, and he has 286K on the clock because he's constantly travelling. His battery is showing over 90% of its rated range, and he's never had any issues to speak of.

The Nissan Leaf is an awful design because it uses an air-cooled battery, and those don't hold up well. Everything else uses a modern liquid-cooled thermal system, and it's pretty rare to hear of them wearing out. The older Model S is susceptible to battery failure, but that's usually the result of water intrusion instead of cell degradation. I think battery failures will be about as common as engine failures. Rare, even as they age, but a huge bill when they do.

It's a heckuva lot easier to install a charging unit than a gas station.

It doesn't make sense to think that the technology and infrastructure of tomorrow will be the same as we have today. Few things in history have changed faster than the state of automotive technology over the last two decades.