This data is from the NHTSA — the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints are spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem.
So how do you find out what problems are occurring? For this NHTSA complaint data, the only way is to read through the comments below. Any duplicates or errors? It's not us.
Consumer experienced two broken front coil springs. While driving, there was a terrible noise coming from the front end. When the consumer looked under the vehicle, he found two broken front coil springs.
I have a 2000 Ford Taurus with about 40,000 miles, while pulling out of the driveway one morning I heard a loud explosion, at least one front coil spring broke (the driver side).
The front coil spring snapped and sliced the tire. The consumer placed the vehicle in reverse and heard a loud noise. The consumer had gotten out of the vehicle and saw the front driver tire was flat. When the vehicle had taken off, the front coil spring had broke in half and acted as a knife and sliced the tire.
I have a Ford tarus 2000, with 41,000 miles, my wife went to drive the car and before she started the car -the car was stationary- there was an explosive sound in the front due to the left front tire blowing out. I raised the car with a jack and found the coil spring had broken apart and was embedded in the tire. Had someone been driving the car at 70 mph it is quite likely the car would have rolled over. If a spring failure does happen while the car is at driving velocity and causes the car to wreck in one way or another, the broken spring will be seen as a result of the crash and not as the cause of the crash. The Ford people told me there is no recall and that they are allowed 1% failure rate before a recall is initiated. The spring is very critical to steering and to allow 10,000 failures, a possible 10,000 fatalities per million is unacceptable.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
- Red Creek, NY, USA