Thousands of Ford owners may be at risk of injury from flawed air bag repairs

Ford Motor Co. is in the midst of a complex “recall of a recall,” reinspecting more than a quarter-million vehicles after the company discovered sloppy work and false billing by dealership technicians during the required replacement of dangerous Takata air bags.

Some customers whose repair records mistakenly reflect fixes never made are at risk from the devices, which can explode without warning and spray shrapnel on vehicle occupants. Others, drivers of certain Ranger pickups, may have incorrectly installed air bags that may not deploy in a crash, putting passengers at risk.

A Free Press investigation reviewed internal company documents, dealership memos, federal regulatory filings and court papers, showing that Ford fined some dealerships whose repair techs billed the automaker for replacing Takata air bags despite installing the devices incorrectly or not doing the work at all. A federal whistleblower complaint alleges Ford invited trouble by easing repair rules to allow low-skill techs to process the repairs quickly — a charge the automaker adamantly denies.

Drivers left dealerships thinking their air bags were safe. Still, without a reinspection, they and their front-seat passengers have remained at risk of gruesome injury and even death every time they are on the road — illustrated by the case of a Texas woman who lost her left eye in a low-speed accident in 2020. Sara Mae Morgan settled a lawsuit with Ford in 2022 and the dealership in 2023. She described to the Free Press a variety of life-altering injuries from the accident in a Mustang whose owners had taken the car in for air bag replacement.

Part of the problem is that no one — not the drivers, Ford, or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — knows exactly which vehicles weren’t repaired correctly. Among the challenges is that Ford must track down current owners of vehicles as old as 2004 models and reinspect them.

"I can't sleep at night when I think of this," the whistleblower told the Free Press. "It makes me physically ill.”

Ford told the Free Press it is committed to finding and repairing the vehicles in question and characterized the problem as isolated. 

Most of the vehicles — nearly 232,000 — are Ranger pickups, for which Ford issued a formal recall in 2023 because of the potential for incorrect passenger-side air bag installation. In this instance, Takata air bags were replaced, but those installed improperly may not deploy in a crash, leaving passengers at risk.

Another 41,600 Ford vehicles of various models “where we believe there could be issues with repairs” must be reinspected, Ford spokesman T.R. Reid told the Free Press. In those instances, Ford’s records show that air bag replacement was completed, but by technicians found to have cut corners on some recall work.

The whistleblower contends the numbers are much higher, based on information from dealers.

The problem was serious enough that Ford fined certain dealerships thousands of dollars after making the discovery. Ford will not reveal how many dealers were fined or how much, but Reid said the penalties “were substantial enough to get their attention and make clear that the behavior wasn’t acceptable.”  

Punishment for bad behavior

A Ford document reviewed by the Free Press warned dealers of fines of $10,000 per violation, and dealers told the Free Press that some dealership fines reached six figures. One dealer, whom the Free Press is not naming to avoid compromising his relationship with Ford, called it a “money grab” intended to offset a slice of Ford’s massive recall costs.

Ford’s reinspection program for the nearly 42,000 vehicles, which is not listed as a formal safety recall, runs through March 2027, according to documents filed with federal safety regulators. Reid told the Free Press in early February about 11% of that work is done. He said only about 1.5% of the reinspections turned up Takata replacement problems. 

Ford sold millions of the models from which the 41,600 was drawn, including Fusions, Edges, Mustangs and more. Reid said the company has found no reason to inspect a larger sampling of those models, even though he said during interviews and via email the 1.5% error rate may be close to normal for any repair.

'A ticking time bomb'

Michael Brooks, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, said more vehicles should be reinspected.

“I think Ford needs to go back and do a full audit to make sure no one has received a fake Takata repair, that they don’t miss anything,” Brooks said. “They need to find every vehicle that hasn’t received the correct fix. They’re the ones ultimately responsible. These are consumers who presented their vehicles for repair and they weren’t repaired.

“After years of exposure, the failure rate of the air bags goes through the roof and becomes incredibly dangerous,” Brooks said. “If someone gets an incorrect repair, they’re going to be at risk. There’s no question. You literally have a ticking time bomb that can explode at any moment.”

Most consumers know about Takata air bag recalls. But this issue is more insidious because consumers think they’ve taken care of the dangerous problem. Their vehicle repair records indicate the problem is fixed. But in reality, the danger worsens with every passing day as the air bags age.

Risk of injury for at least 4,000 drivers

The repair failures are tied to the largest automotive recall in U.S. history, that of 67 million Takata air bag inflators, whose metal canisters degrade with age, heat and humidity and can, without warning, become bombs. Takata air bag explosions in the U.S. have killed 26 people and injured hundreds with sharp metal fragments to the face, neck and chest since the late 1990s. 

The risk of death and deformity increases with time in the millions of vehicles still needing repair. 

Ford was among 19 automakers required to recall vehicles using Takata air bags. In Ford’s case, that was nearly 4.4 million air bag inflators in an estimated 3.95 million vehicles, Ford spokeswoman Maria Buczkowski said.

In the reinspection programs, based on numbers Ford provided, about 60 of the reexamined vehicles have been found so far with flawed air bag replacements. If the 1.5% error rate holds for the 270,000 designated for reinspection, about 4,000 would be found with air bag flaws that were supposed to have been fixed. 

The number is small, but each of those 4,000 vehicles holds the potential for devastating consequences — if incorrectly installed replacement air bags don't deploy or if unreplaced Takata devices explode. 

She lost an eye

In June 2020, Morgan climbed into the passenger seat of a 2007 Ford Mustang, clipped her seat belt and settled in to ride with her boyfriend to her job as a waitress at Smithhart's Texas Grill, south of Houston. According to the lawsuit she filed and later settled, a minor fender bender at less than 14 mph triggered an air bag explosion that discharged shrapnel into her face. 

Her left eyeball is gone. Her right eye is damaged. She has hearing loss and tinnitus.

It shouldn’t have happened — the boyfriend’s family took the Mustang to a dealership in October 2018 to replace the defective Takata air bags. But the vehicle’s repair records, obtained by the Free Press, showed only the driver-side air bag was fixed.

"Now I have to see a counselor that helps me with my mental health, or PTSD, from the accident,” Morgan told the Free Press. “It's kind of gut-wrenching. I'm just trying to find a way to cope. 

"It's like a feeling of grief, the way I feel when I look back. Just pain, honestly. And I'll have flashbacks."

Morgan, now 23, of Pearland, Texas, said she lost count of her surgeries after a dozen. She takes medicine to sleep. She takes medicine for migraines. She takes medicine for depression now. She finds it difficult to be in public. She doesn't go underwater anymore, worried about protecting her eye socket.

"It was an air bag,” Morgan said, pausing. “That's what's supposed to protect you when you get in an accident. And it can seriously, drastically change your life in a matter of seconds."

Ford launches internal audit to crack down on wrongdoing

After finding evidence of shoddy recall work, Ford in 2020 required specific dealers to audit certain safety repairs. Ford says the audit, called the Dealer Incomplete Recall Repair Process, was triggered when it discovered some technicians failed to complete door latch recall work for which they billed the automaker. 

The audit also directed the dealers to review work on air bags and seat belt components, a company document shows. The audit focused on techs whose work was flagged; the company won’t say how many workers were involved. 

As a result of the audit, Ford wrote to its roughly 3,000 Lincoln and Ford dealers on March 28, 2022, saying the company determined that vehicles claimed by dealers as repaired under the Takata air bag safety recalls may not have actually had the repairs.

That letter told dealers to inspect vehicles in the shop and ensure air bags are installed correctly. The reinspection was classified as a “quality inspection program,” which differs from a formal recall. An NHTSA representative said the quality inspection program “is an audit to ensure recall repairs, and it and other service programs were conducted as instructed. While there is no reporting requirement, Ford regularly updates the agency on the progress of such programs during meetings.”

The program includes 2004-11 Ranger pickups. In spring 2023, 2004-06 Rangers were formally recalled for air bag reinspection. Enough mistakes were found in Rangers during work that followed the March 2022 memo to prompt last year's recall.  

Beyond the Ranger, Ford’s 2022 memo said vehicles to be reinspected included select 2007-10 Ford Edges; 2006-12 Ford Fusions; 2005-06 Ford GTs; 2005-14 Ford Mustangs; 2007-10 Lincoln MKXs; 2006-12 Lincoln Zephyr/MKZs; and 2006-11 Mercury Milans. 

Letters went to affected vehicle owners in April 2022 saying, “A Ford Motor Company quality audit found that it is possible that the dealership technician who serviced your vehicle did not complete some of the repairs that the dealership submitted claims for.”

Thayne Hansen, Ford director of service engineering operations for the international markets group, referred to the rechecks as “the recall of a recall” in an interview with the Free Press. 

Whistleblower allegations challenge Ford's good faith

A whistleblower complaint that outlines safety concerns, initially filed with federal safety regulators in 2019 and obtained by the Free Press, argues that the danger evolved, in part, from Ford’s decision to change training requirements for technicians.

Ford, which denies changing standards, and the whistleblower offer differing narratives of what happened: 

The whistleblower — whom the Free Press is not naming because of the person’s concern about damaging their business relationship with Ford — alleges that in 2019, Ford moved to allow workers without adequate training to complete air bag repairs. 

A follow-up letter in July 2022 to top NHTSA officials from the whistleblower’s lawyer said, “Ford Motor Company intentionally caused bad actors and egregious actions by turning away from their own published policies.”

Takata air bags were so common that, after their danger was discovered, they couldn’t be replaced quickly. NHTSA set a schedule that is still being completed, with 7.1 million of 67 million air bag inflators originally recalled still to be replaced, according to the NHTSA website. 

By late 2018 — around the same period that the Ford Mustang that later injured Morgan was taken to the shop for air bag repair — Ford came under pressure from federal safety regulators to speed up its Takata repairs. Dealerships were already buried with recall and warranty work, with Ford second among automakers in recalls in 2017-18. 

The Free Press obtained a November 2018 document from Ford to its dealers notifying them that a “new Service Dispatch Flexibility program will replace the current Technician Competency Performance Exemption program.” 

“Use the program to dispatch repair work to experienced/qualified Technicians that may not yet be certified,” the document said. 

To catch up on Takata replacements, the whistleblower complaint argues, Ford eased its standards for who could do recall repairs, permitting “Quick Lane” workers who usually did routine work such as oil changes, tire rotation or brake pad replacement to now replace air bags.

That, the whistleblower contends, invited the sloppy work. 

'Guidelines are vague'

Ford argues that, contrary to the whistleblower’s assertion, the company did not change standards for who could replace Takata air bags. Reid and Buczkowski said the 2019 policy changes involved warranty work, which they separate from recall repairs. 

Reid said in an email that “the technical requirements for performing recall service work have not changed from 2018 and forward.”

Dealers interviewed by the Free Press saw it differently. 

“Policy guidelines are vague enough that it’s not at all uncommon for the same vehicle to go into two different stores (dealerships) and one says it’s a warranty repair and the other store doesn’t. It’s a function of interpretation,” one longtime dealer told the Free Press, asking that the dealership name be withheld to avoid backlash from corporate headquarters. 

“Ford’s office of general counsel is over-the-top conservative. I’m guessing that somebody in warranty writes those recall instructions and sends them on to the office of general counsel and then anything that could possibly paint Ford into a corner gets taken out,” the dealer said. 

Three dealers in different parts of the U.S. told the Free Press that Ford technicians see doing warranty repair and recall or tech service bulletin work as all the same. 

“A Field Service Action is an overarching term that encompasses all that stuff,” one dealer said. "Ford is the customer. Ford determines how much they get paid for it. And the techs don’t always agree with the process.

“In all stores (dealerships) I’ve ever seen, technicians do the work, whatever it is; customer pay, insurance or warranty. If you asked a technician if a recall is warranty work, he’d say yes. That’s nine out of 10 techs. For both, Ford determines how long it takes, Ford tells them how to do it and Ford says what parts to use.”

 The dealer, who echoed the whistleblower, said, “Techs fix things that need fixing. A recall is a warranty and a technical service bulletin is warranty. The door latch recall … all of a sudden Ford reduced reimbursement rates … Techs were upset, so they were shortcutting the job. I never thought they would do that in reference to Takata. … But there are obviously some seriously disgruntled techs out there.”

Ford cut rates to its repair techs in years leading up to the air bag repair backlog, which angered many techs and sparked an online change.org petition in November 2019 that collected 3,950 Ford tech signatures.

“Next time your car is at a dealer for days, and you wonder why, it's because the few of us that remain cannot handle all of the work,” Ford dealership technician William Stox told the Free Press. “Cuts in our labor times, combined with warranty becoming 60-70% of our workload, have driven tech shortages that are occurring. … It's immoral, unethical.”

Ford: 'It's not that hard'

Ford says technical certification isn’t necessary for air bag repairs — and that any changes came under pressure from NHTSA to accept some added risk. 

Federal regulators urged automakers to be creative, “to go find ways to do things,” said Hansen, Ford's director of service engineering operations. “Under the guidance of the monitor from NHTSA, we were being encouraged — I will say encouraged would be a mild word — we were being encouraged to go and look at new ways … in regards to getting more repairs done.”

Reid said, “In order to get more customers in for assessments and necessary repairs more quickly, it required everybody, manufacturers and NHTSA, to think differently. And that’s what we did.”

The dealership employees who ordinarily did routine tasks would be working off illustrated, step-by-step instructions. 

“In 2019, we reminded (dealers) that recall repairs, directed repairs, could be done by any of their technicians,” Reid told the Free Press. “Recall repairs are structured, broken down in a way that make them relatively simple to do.

“Because they’re not diagnosing a problem, they’re looking to make sure it’s installed correctly,” Reid said. “That can be shown with descriptions and graphics so they can identify whether it’s done right.”

The primary reason that Ford “reminded” the dealers of the protocol in 2019, Reid said, “is because they were starting to get backlogged on recall repairs generally.”

Ford reiterated to dealers that “any technician had the ability to do that,” Buczkowski said of air bag replacements. “These are actually not as complicated repairs as I think you’re being told by the dealers.”

Yet, regarding the 2004-06 Ranger pickups recalled last year, repair techs “didn’t follow the repair procedures that we had sent to them,” Buczkowski said. “They didn’t properly follow instructions.”

Hansen said the fixes involve simply replacing the inflator or entire air bag, if necessary, not servicing the air bag itself or the system that controls it.

“If a person can follow directions, anyone can do it,” he said. “It’s not hard.”

'Anytime I deal with an air bag, I take it very seriously'

Others say replacement of air bags, which they describe as deceptively complex electrical and chemical packets, requires expertise. 

Stephen Ridella, then-director of vehicle crashworthiness research at NHTSA, cautioned in 2015 about the difficulty of Takata replacements. Ridella said during a webinar, "these inflator parts are complex and unique ... only someone with specialized training should replace these parts."

Michael Crossen is an automotive service excellence master certified technician at Consumer Reports and former master certified automotive technician at Mercedes-Benz.

“The driver’s air bag is not terribly difficult to replace, provided you follow safety precautions,” Crossen told the Free Press. “The passenger air bag is definitely more difficult to replace. Most master technicians could replace the driver’s air bag in five to 10 minutes. A passenger air bag could take hours. You may have to remove pieces of the dashboard or the whole dashboard cover.

“Any time I deal with an air bag, I take it very seriously. Air bags are maybe second only to seat belts in terms of crash safety. You need to make sure you don’t rush,” Crossen said. “If I were a customer, I would like to think the technician working on an important safety system in my vehicle has more experience than just oil changes.”

What happens when an air bag deploys is complex. Sensors in vehicles detect collisions, and those sensors send an electric signal to the canister that contains a colorless salt known as sodium azide, and the electric signal detonates a small amount of an igniter compound, Joseph Merola, a chemistry professor and associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Tech, wrote in Scientific American in 1999. The heat from this ignition starts the decomposition of the sodium azide, which is poisonous, and the generation of nitrogen gas to fill the air bag in seconds.

Crossen told the Free Press in mid-February, "When a dashboard air bag goes off, you usually have to replace the dashboard because it tears it apart. When an air bag goes off, it's a violent event."

Brooks, with the Center for Auto Safety, said other automakers, including Toyota and Honda, have gone to extremes to ensure that they not only have achieved the highest recall repair rates possible but have told the owners of vehicles in some instances that they need to park the vehicles and not drive them until the air bags are replaced. 

Toyota, Honda issue new safety recalls

Toyota issued a do-not-drive warning in January for 50,000 2003-05 vehicles, Brooks noted. “They know how dangerous this is. This isn’t one of those safety defects where there’s a one in 10,000 chance. Once those inflator chemicals are exposed, you’re looking at significant rates of failure. That’s why it’s so urgent to get these fixes done properly."

In May 2019, Honda recalled 19,000 vehicles after identifying a problem similar to Ford’s. The company told NHTSA, “A nationwide audit on the workmanship of vehicles repaired by service technicians no longer employed by Acura or Honda dealerships prior to May 2018” found that “passenger frontal air bag inflators may have been incorrectly installed at certain dealerships.” NHTSA’s safety bulletin at the time stated that air bag replacement should be performed only by "skilled technicians who have the proper tools, equipment and training ..." 

A service technician from Hoover, Alabama, posting on an internal Ford site in 2023, criticized the use of Quick Lane techs for repair work because air bag replacement requires more than “any trained monkey” can perform. And a senior master technician from Great Bend, Kansas, noted that Ford is allowing dealership managers to determine capability — but then face punishment later if there’s a problem. The Free Press reviewed the comments. 

NHTSA told the Free Press via email that regulators are working with the automaker to bring the safety issue into compliance through the 2022 quality inspection program. The agency said it does not acknowledge or discuss whistleblower complaints publicly or the potential status of an investigation. The whistleblower said they last had contact with regulators in 2022.

Ford jumps to the front in air bag replacement rates

After telling dealers to be creative and use more personnel to handle Takata recall work, Ford's air bag replacements sped up significantly. The company attributed the surge in repairs to parts availability.

But problems emerged, leading to the March 2020 announcement of an audit program examining allegations of suspicious repairs performed by certain technicians. 

Reid told the Free Press the audits first looked at door latch recall repairs, but turned up other issues that led to reexamining Takata air bag replacements and seat belt components.

That audit — called the Dealer Incomplete Recall Repair Process — turned up enough flawed repairs that the company launched its ongoing five-year reinspection program. 

Ford won’t disclose the full results, but the Free Press reviewed a document that showed one dealer who, as part of the audit, inspected 137 vehicles and discovered 61 incomplete air bag repairs. 

The larger audit was focused on technicians whose work had come under scrutiny. 

Ford noted that, “In one outcome of that auditing, we learned that 98.5% of the Takata air bag replacements by those technicians were done correctly in the first place.”

Ford customers get tangled in bigger recall crisis backlog

The Takata recall and the reinspection program added work for an automaker swamped in recent years with billions of dollars in recall and warranty work, which not only causes a backlog at dealerships but because of Ford’s cap on reimbursement brings in less money than regular mechanic work. 

Ford has issued far more recalls than its competitors. Some dealers warn customers to expect a monthslong wait for repair, with some even suggesting they go to a non-Ford shop, customers from different parts of the country told the Free Press.

Certified technicians already were angry with the Ford mothership by the dawn of 2019 over 2017 limits on reimbursement for recall repairs. The whistleblower told the Free Press that wrongdoing related to these Takata repairs could have easily been predicted and prevented. 

In March 2023, Ford sent a letter to dealers urging them — as it did in 2019 — "to be creative in their approach to completing Takata air bag recall repairs." Ford referred dealers to examples of creative approaches, called the "non-traditional repair approaches" section in the dealer bulletin.

“That may not be typically how they organized and handled service in their shops,” Reid said. “I suspect because dealers typically had the work done by their service technicians. They also were building, generally speaking, a backlog of warranty repairs that they couldn’t get through their shops because of capacity. … Ultimately, the delivery of service is up to the dealers. They know the people in the shop and they know their capabilities.”

'No checks and balances' between Ford, dealerships

As the reinspection program continues, owners of the affected vehicles may be driving with an explosive device that can malfunction at any time. 

Two Ford dealers told the Free Press many vehicle owners are numb to recall notices, they arrive so often from automakers now, and certainly the Takata warnings have faded to a dull hum after all these years.

Sara Mae Morgan reached a confidential settlement with Ford in 2022 and the dealership in February 2023, with the help of Houston trial lawyer Rob Ammons, who has done significant work involving air bags.

It was Ammons' client, Air Force Lt. Stephanie Erdman, who testified before Congress in 2014 after being blinded in one eye from air bag shrapnel while driving a 2002 Honda Civic. Today, Erdman is featured on the Ford website urging consumers to get their air bags fixed.

"We thought we succeeded in fixing this problem, but now we're learning there's no checks and balances between Ford and the dealerships," Ammons told the Free Press. "The longer they’re (air bags) in the car, the more likely they are to have an uncontrolled deployment. This isn’t like a great wine that gets better with age."

He emphasized in mid-February, "Unless we get all of these air bags out of these vehicles and replaced with safer ones, we're going to see more of these ruptures and catastrophic injuries."

Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: 313-618-1034 or phoward@freepress.com. Follow her on X at @phoebesaid

This story has been revised from its original posting to add detail about the 2023 recall of 2004-06 Ranger pickups.