Ford’s Many Recalls Are Leading To Months-Long Waits For Dealer Repairs - Jalopnik
Shaunl/Getty Images In 2025, Ford set the record for the most recalls ever in a single year in the U.S. All in all, the automaker issued 153 recalls, impact...
Shaunl/Getty Images
In 2025, Ford set the record for the most recalls ever in a single year in the U.S. All in all, the automaker issued 153 recalls, impacting a total of 12,958,128. Things haven't been much better in 2026. Sure, it won't hit the same number of recalls again (inshallah), but thus far, the Blue Oval has issued 75 recalls for 14,037,387 vehicles, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That's right, it managed to recall more cars this year than last year with fewer than half of the actual recall cases. With nearly 27 million recalls in just the past two years, it might not surprise you to learn that FoMoCo is having a tough time keeping up, and it's leading to astonishingly long wait times for fixes.
Sure, over-the-air fixes have helped remedy some of the issues these cars are dealing with, but many of them require actual visits to dealerships, and owners are being met with lengthy wait times for repairs to be made available, according to The Detroit News. In some cases, they're waiting months, and means they're forced to drive around with cars that could have collision and fire risks that could result in very real injuries.
NHTSA defines a "significant" remedy delay as more than the initial 60 days automakers have to notify customers that a recall has been issued. Ford is, uh, sort of living in that zone. Its average was 198 days from 22 recalls with significant remedy delays issued in 2025 through June of this year, The Detroit News reports. When looking at the data between 2021 and 2025, Ford placed third when it came to "significant" recall delays with an average of 174 days across 110 recalls. It was only beaten out by Nissan and Stellantis, which were at 299 and 225 days, respectively. Obviously, that's not great, but something to keep in mind is that both those companies issued far fewer recalls over the 60-day threshold, with Nissan at 13 and Stellantis at 27. Ford is nothing if not prolific.
Built Ford Rough
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Many of the recalls issued over that period between 2021 and 2025 also affected hundreds of thousands of vehicles each. During that time, 79% of recalls industry-wide had a remedy within two months, but over at Ford, that number was just 53%, the outlet reports. All in all, 6 million vehicles during that time frame didn't get a remedy for at least a year. Imagine driving around in a car with an active fire risk warning for an entire year.
Much of it comes down to parts availability and roll-out, since ramping up a parts supply chain for additional capacity for a replacement part can take months. Because of that, Ford has looked to other means for fixes, as The Detroit News explains:
Ford has taken the lead over Tesla Inc. on annual over-the-air updates, a repair that automakers have highlighted as cost-effective and fast, [an industry analyst] said. At least eight of the recalls Ford issued last year were over-the-air fixes.
Other fixes may need mobile service repairs or for the vehicle to go to the dealership for the repair. A recall covering hundreds of thousands of Bronco Sport SUVs and Escape crossovers for a fuel injector that could crack, leak and create a fire risk took 11 months to get a remedy after an initial software update to detect for cracks, [the analyst] said.
It's not just customers, either. Dealers are also feeling the pain of Ford's endless barrage of recalls, and it's not even because they have to deal with servicing them. The issue they face is that they can't sell vehicles with open recalls, and if Ford knows a recall is coming down the pipeline, it could hold the vehicle at the manufacturing plant. One dealer The Detroit News spoke to brought up how JD Power recently ranked Ford the number one mainstream brand for initial quality, so better things are coming.
Since releasing that news on June 25, Ford has issued 22 recalls.