November 15, 2016 • 31 mins
Cars are complex pieces of machinery, and every so often manufacturers slip up by including a component that doesn't work as intended, forcing a recall. Tune in to learn more about the most deadly automotive recalls in history.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from how Stuff Works dot Com. I'd welcome
to car Stuff. I'm Scott. And then we are joined,
of course by our super producer today Noel Pump your
brakes Brown, No Ignition Fire Brown. Yeah, I've been that's
(00:25):
a good one. I've been thinking of the phrase pump
your brakes and you know, sometimes I will go through
these phases, ladies and gentlemen, where I obsessively or continually
over use a phrase like coolier jets, coolier jets. Pump
your brakes is uh, something that really gets the strangers
(00:45):
if you say it, it seems kind of offensive. It's
like calling someone you don't know bozo. It's like it's
like yelling at them hey three times, like hey hey yeah.
But uh, with that mind, we're picking Ignition Fire or
pump your brakes as nicknames from role here because it's
appropriate for today's episode. It is. Yeah, we're gonna be
(01:07):
talking about some of the most terrifying vehicle manufacturing defects.
So because straight in the factory, these are the problems
that are I guess pre installed in your car right
from the right, from the from the get go. Yeah,
and we'd like to go ahead and point your attention
to our earlier episode on how car recalls work. Uh,
that has a lot of information that's more large scale,
(01:30):
I guess some of the calculations that car manufacturers undergo
when they are assessing a defect or whether to make
a recall. Yeah. And if you want to take a
second look at anything that we're gonna talk about today,
that we're following along with one of the articles from
our site, from how stuff works dot com, and it
is called ten most terrifying vehicle manufacturing defects rather and uh,
(01:51):
we're gonna just kind of go through this list from
ten to one. And UM, I don't know if they
necessarily go by how scary they are, because there are
some really scary ones all along throughout here. I mean,
there's something that are not so scary they just have
huge numbers. But we're gonna stick with the scary ones
I think today. UM, just for an example, Ben, right
here in the intro of this article, it says that
(02:11):
you know, here's an example of a defect that's not
so scary. Um, in nineteen seventy two, there's a recall
three point seven million vehicles from Volkswagen that were built
between n and nineteen sixty nine, and the reason that
they were brought back, all three point seven million of them,
was because they had loose windshield wipers. So see that's
not very scary, right, loose windshield wipers. It's an annoyance. Well,
(02:32):
how heavy are the wipers flinging off of there at
a at a high rate of speed? Now they're just loose,
and so you bring it back in and tighten it up.
No problem. But then skip forward Toteen where General Motors
had an ignition switch recall. Uh, it gets a lot
more pressed because it affected slightly fewer vehicles at two
point six million. But they believe that that recall, or
(02:54):
that that faulty product was caused the cause of thirteen death,
so significant different it's in in the severity of this
whole thing, right, you get you get the point. And
that's the kind of recall that we're gonna be talking
about today. Are the ones that UM had the potential
to cause some harm if they didn't. Well, let's go
into number ten. This is something that Scott and I
are both familiar with because this occurred in the lifetime
(03:20):
of our show yea at the very beginning, right, Yeah,
I think we're a high speed stuff. I think it
was happening right when we started this podcast. So you
may catch some early mention of this early on. I
think we kind of stayed away from it. Uh we
had a sponsorship going on there that didn't it didn't
look too uh well, I didn't want us to talk
about it all that much. It wasn't directly with us either. No, no,
it wasn't. So anyways, well let's talk about this. So
(03:43):
this is this is going back to when was it
right around two thowo nine and maybe even a little
bit earlier than that, because, um, the problem was here.
Here's the problem. Toyota was known as a very reliable vehicle,
has been known as that all along and it still
is really and they do great work in safety. And
usually when you hop in a Toyota, you know that
(04:06):
it will accelerate only when you intend it to. Yeah,
And so we started getting these reports and I'm sure
a lot of people can remember this, these reports of
unintended acceleration happening and people calling while they're on the
freeway and they can't stop. And there was kind of
like a panic going on, and if you had one
of these cars, you were afraid to drive it. You
just didn't want you didn't want anything to do with
this because it sounds terrifying. It is terrifying. Um. It
(04:29):
caused thirty one deaths, thirty one and this was the
claim that these these cars would not stop accelerating once
they start going. And Toyota didn't really help itself in
some of these situations because first they said that driver
it was user error essentially, then the numbers kept adding
(04:50):
up and they said, well, it's a it's a faulty
floor mat. Oh yeah. They said that the floor mat
was interfering with the accelerator pedal and that was what
they recalled. So they would bring it back in. They
would fix the floor mats in two thousand nine, and
that was that was supposed to be the solution, and
I thought that was it, but then it just continued
to happen. So in two thousand ten they finally issued
a recall for a sticky pedal mechanism. So nine million
(05:13):
cars in total were recalled for this, and it didn't
quite go away there because Toyota had to pay a
one point two billion dollar settlement for misleading investigators in
that whole situation. So it cost them big in the end.
It costs some people their lives as well. Um, and
it was awesome. How bad is that for your reputation?
Reputation too? I mean just awful. It's one of those
(05:34):
things where people still talk about it. People still remember,
we're talking about it now. Um. But you know, honestly,
the most of their product is still solid, it's still
it still works, right, and they fixed the problem. It's
just how long does it take? I mean, you can
point fingers and you know what. Let's not even go
down that path. Let's just let's go to the next one.
I just want to say, I just want to say
that they still weren't as bad as Comcast, which remains
(05:56):
the number one least popular company in this country. I
think you're right. I think yeah, all right, So just
just you guys know it's not gonna get Comcast bad?
Could I say that? I guess so? Sure, a little
personal vendetta, maybe think something going on there? All right,
So let's move on to number nine Firestone. Here's another
(06:17):
one that's very recent history, and I bet a lot
of people remember this. But in the nine nineties. Of
course SUVs were huge. They still are kind of huge.
I mean more crossovers now, but SUVs were really kind
of at their height of popularity at this point in
the nineties. And one of the most popular vehicles that
Ford had was the Explorer at the time, the great vehicle,
full size Explorer, big vehicle, really good. Yeah, a lot
(06:38):
of people that I knew had them. And the problem
was they paired up with Man tire manufacturer of Firestone,
which is nothing new and for its history or anything,
but they paired up with them on a specific type
of tire and you know, of course it's a it's
a truck tire, a light plate duty truck tire, pretty big.
The problem was that the tread would separate from the
steel belts and this means that the tire will blow.
(07:00):
So a lot of as we point out in the article,
a lot of the drivers in SUVs in the nineties
and maybe you know, I'm gonna say even today have
these vehicles, but they use them just as their daily driver.
They're not going off roade, didn't even get on gravel,
and it's it's always on pavement, and you know, you
encounter a pothole or something and that's about the most
(07:23):
or you know what speed bump and you know it's
really obnoxious when they slow down at the speed bump.
I know that. Think that grinds your gears, grind my
gears so much. Man. Remember when our office was next
to uh those malls, big really fancy malls, and I
always come back, uh just steam. I was ticked off, man,
(07:43):
it was I don't see it that way. I don't
see it that. It doesn't matter how big the truck is.
It seems like they should still take the speed bump slow.
I mean that's the intended well they should slow down. Yeah,
but they Okay, you're right, you're right, you're absolutely right.
I can see you. You're formulating something over there. No, no,
you're running out. You want to take the take the
loss on this one. It's just uh, I think it's
(08:04):
you know, it's like what we talked about with um
cars that were black sheet of their family. Like if
you get a vehicle for an intended purpose, of course,
it's your money and it's your car. But if I
see somebody in a four by four slowing down as
though they're driving, uh, gingerly, gingerly scooting a ferrari over something.
(08:27):
It just doesn't make sense. I kind of get that
it was mainly hummers, but mainly humbes. Okay, I understand,
but it seems like it does seem that the majority
of of off roading has done at very very low speeds.
To you crawl over things, you don't necessarily hit them
at top speed. But regardless of personal pet peeves and stuff,
which again are entirely subjective, everyone who has a set
(08:52):
at tires deserves for them not to blow up. Oh yeah,
that's for sure. And and the problem was, you know,
you're driving along there on the pavement and uh, and
the tire blows on you. Most of the drivers didn't
have really any experience of what to do if a
tire blows. I mean, you just it's something that until
it happens to you, it's it's a foreign it's a
foreign thing to you. You You just don't know what to do,
how to react. And here's the problem. A lot of
(09:13):
the drivers were also in their first maybe tall vehicle.
You know, not not every driver, of course, but you
know a lot of them are just kind of experiencing
this at that height, that ride height for the first time.
So it's it's a little bit jarring when that happens,
and they would overcorrect spin the wheel, you know, in
the overcorrection, the vehicle would flip over. And so here's
the problem. Like it was like, you know, the tire
(09:37):
manufacturer was blaming Ford and they were drying. They were
blaming the the owners because they were overreacting to know
how to handle the situation. It was just this back
and forth between who's at fault for all three of
those and uh, eventually it kind of came out and
they came out and the watch that Yeah, it was
a faulty tire that was the problem. It wasn't necessarily
that um uh there was a problem with the Ford
Explorer design or anything like that. It wasn't a problem.
(09:59):
And I guess it is you know, driver fault that
they didn't know how to correct the you know, the
situation when it happened. But but again, then you can't
expect people to in an ideal world, everyone would know
the correct maneuvers, but people are not expecting to have
explosive tires. Yeah, I guess so. I mean that's that's
(10:19):
like an invasive that's an invasive move. That's more of
a defensive driving situation is something you would learn, ye
recovery move You learn that in like maybe an advanced
driving school or some kind you know, like that how
to handle that kind of situation. You don't learn that
in drivers, No, you don't, although you should, you really should.
How to how to steer out of a skid, that
type of thing. Yeah, I think I think a lot
(10:39):
of people do get how to how to correct a
swerve without over correcting, but or skid. As you said,
but this is a big deal. I mean this. The
the flipover resulted in two hundred deaths. Over two hundred
deaths and six point five million Firestone tires were recalled,
but Ford also offered to replace an additional thirteen million.
(11:00):
Thirteen million tires they had to replace. Crazy, but yeah,
that's a that's in addition to the six and a
half million of fire Stone brought back. Oh man, that's
a lot of tires. Al right, So you know what,
let's how about this before we go on to our
our next one. Let's so let's stop for a word
from our sponsor. All right, and we're back and we're
on number eight of our list. Man. So Ford had
(11:20):
uh Ford had a string of bad luck, really a
string of bad luck. That's a way. That's a way
to put it. So you're familiar with the Lincoln Navigator, right,
Oh yeah, the Lincoln Navigator, which I know has is
device of at times amongst both uh fans of Lincoln
and fans of SUVs, is the most recalled of all
(11:42):
Ford vehicles. Really. Yeah. Oh I never would have guessed
that due to their cruise control conflagration. Oh oh, that's right. Okay,
So that's what this one is about. It is about
the fires, and uh, this is a big deal between
and two thousand four a total of fourteen point nine
million in vehicles. Uh. That that cruise controls which would
(12:03):
short out and catch fire. And uh, the thing was crazy,
thing is you didn't really have to be you know,
you might say, well, I don't use cruise control, right,
it wouldn't have affected me. You didn't have to be
done that. They would just short out on its own
and catch fire. So you could just be driving along
doing whatever it is you do, no cruise control activated,
suddenly there's a fire. And Ford, to be clear, this
(12:23):
is another component that Ford did not build. These were
actually built by Texas instruments. Yes, that Texas instruments. The
folks who have had the same calculator that everyone uses
at some point in middle or high school. Oh yeah,
that's right. I remember those. I likely did. Yeah, man,
I had calculators when I was at that age, you know,
(12:44):
and grade school in high school. I was scandalized by
how expensive it was. Yeah, of course. But yeah, so
they manufactured this. Uh, this was the largest recall in history. Yeah,
what I would say, almost almost fifteen million vehicles, right, huge?
All right, So let's shift manufacturers here, Ben, We're gonna
(13:05):
go over to General Motors for a bit, how about that? Alright?
So General Motors had an issue with um engine mounts
at some point in their history, and it was a
long time ago. Actually, it's one of the earliest recalls really,
and it was a big one. Again, but the fix
on this one is surprising when when you hear what's
going on. Now. The the image that's used here in
this in this article is of the n KMARO SS.
(13:27):
But we're talking about cars generally, a lot of different
cars that had great, big vat engines. So I understand
that there's a lot of a lot of torque happening
under the wood there, right, all right, So here's what happened.
The engine mounts were bad. They were just simply bad.
They would they would break, and you know that's bad enough, right,
But the under the hood, the engine would twist when
you're trying to accelerate, and it would also like it
(13:48):
would sometimes accelerate when you didn't want to want it
to accelerate because all the linkages were being pulled and twisted.
And in addition to that, if it's accelerating when it's
not supposed to be, that throws everything else off. And
sometimes it would it would disable to break a sist. Right,
So here's the strange fix they had. And I kind
of like this is a mcdever thing. I like the
(14:08):
ingenuity of it, but just how they did. So we
let's say you took your maybe your sixty eight Camaro
SS or whatever into the dealership. The mechanic wouldn't actually
replace the mounts. They would just anchor the engine to
the firewall so that when the mounts screwed up, the
(14:30):
engine wouldn't twist around. It's terrible, but the price was
very reasonable. What was the price thirty bucks already fix
for something this huge. I mean they could cause a
lot of damage. Now, imagine that you're you're driving down
the road in your car is accelerating when it's not
supposed to be, and the break assist goes out. So
you've got a pretty heavy vehicle you're trying to stop
with with manual brakes, probably drum brakes, if I had
(14:53):
to guess. In a lot of cases, not every case,
of course, you know, some had disc but and a
lot of cases they were drum break anyway, difficult situation. Uh,
let's continue with this Hall of infamy, my friends. Toyota's
unintended acceleration was definitely an issue. However, it was not
the first time something like this occurred. No, for those
of you that remember the nineteen eighties, Uh, the out
(15:15):
five thousand was maybe the maybe one of the first
ones that you heard about having this situation. And I'm
sure that it happened in the past. Now a lot
of Uh, here's what would happen. The driver would shift
out of park and try to ease out of the
driveway or into parking space, maybe in the garage or whatever.
And what would happen is the car would just kind
of well again, unintended acceleration. It would just take off
(15:36):
on its own. It was almost like it had a
life of its own. It would it would lurch forward.
So I think that I think they at first denied
that anything was going on, and they said that, you know, well,
maybe it's the owner. The pedals are du clos together.
The owners are putting your foot on two different pedals
at one time. And there were a lot of back
and forth about this, and of course the owners were saying, no, no,
I did it right. There's something here. It was lurching forward.
(15:57):
It did it on its own. Um. It took him
a while to get this one kind of meshed out,
like exactly what happened or hammered out. Audi recalled the
cars three times in n eighty three and then again
in nineteen and finally they got it right, but the
problem was out. He said, you know what we're done. Yeah,
it was like the ticket. Did they definitely get it
(16:18):
right or did they get so sour on the problem
that they quit because they stopped selling it in selling
the car in the US in the US. Now that's
that's that's the out five thousand model in the United States,
And was no more. I wonder if this problem persisted overseas.
I wonder if it continued or if it truly was
something that was, you know, an issue with the thing.
I mean, it's one of these things like you've heard
(16:39):
about this and and there's so much back and forth
it's really tough to nail down exactly what was going
on there. But um, I think they finally fessed up
that there was something going there's an issue, well manufacturing issue. Comparatively,
it affected a few cars, you know, less than four
hundred thousand. Yeah fo, I'm just saying compared to millions
and millions, you get compared to four or the Navigator
(17:00):
with their fifteen million or something like that. So let's
move on to something else here. Uh, this one is
one that I didn't see coming, you know, I wasn't
aware of this. But it's back with General motors. So
in the early nineteen seventies, stones could get lodged between
the steering assembly and the frame and it would prevent
the car from turning left. Unbelievable. This would be another
(17:24):
just terrifying one if you were on the road and
this happened, right, So, so imagine just driving over a
gravel road and then you you pull out under the
main road, you turn right to get on the road
or whatever, and I first erect it back. Yeah yeah,
or then you know, the road kind of veers to
the left a little bit and you keep going straight
right into the ditch. I mean that's the kind of
situation that could happen or um, I don't know what angle.
You know it held you back from from going left
(17:44):
or not. But um man, it was because it was
a really easy thing for GM to fix. Um. But
it had to have been just terrifying, but it was.
The recall was done in nineteen seventy three. It's pretty big.
It affected three point seven million vehicles across their lineup,
so a lot of different cars were involved. Um. But man,
that's a scary one. That's it's weird that that could
ever even happen, or how they even figured out that
(18:06):
was happening, And that's that's something that just put yourself
back in three and imagine them trying to figure out
what was going on there and how that happened. Insane. Yeah,
it's pretty it's pretty good that they were able to
nail it down to just that you know, this is
the condition that causes it, and how here's how we're
gonna fix it, you know, without being able to communicate
with all the other dealerships quite as easy as they
can now. I want to I want to set the
(18:27):
scene for this next one because I like the way
we get into it. Imagine you're in your house, in
your bed, sleeping soundly, light snooze. Maybe you got one
of those little uh noisemaker things on gain sounds or
something very peaceful time, very nice. You've got a ford
because you're doing pretty well in life. Your vehicles in
your garage, and it's also just hanging out, just waiting
(18:50):
for the wee hours to pass until that is the
ignition in your car starts itself up, shorts out the
electrical system and melts this deering column. That is some
Christine stuff right there. That's scary. You're lucky. Yeah, well,
you know here's the thing. Like it could be parked
in your garage and uh and burn your house down.
That's one thing that's terrifying. I mean, it could be
(19:11):
you know, just the car itself catches fire, or it
could be parked in a parking lot somewhere, you know,
you know, if your park at work or something and
come back out and you find your car, you know,
a little flem bayh a little carbonC what they called carbecue. Yes,
unfortunately that yeah, I guess so so and this is
a big one too. So Ford put this exact ignition,
the one that caught fire in seven point nine million
(19:33):
vehicles between and nineteen three, and then they didn't recall
them until nineteen so there was an issue all that time.
That's a long long time. Crazy enough, though, no one
died from this particular fault. Yeah, from this defect, I guess,
you know, this manufacturing defect. But I mean it's very lucky. Yeah,
it's very very it's frankly, it's bucking statistics that no
(19:56):
one passed away. Absolutely, And now we are I was
going to say, without further ado, but with a bit
of a do we are going to discuss the top
three most terrifying manufacturing defects. But first weird from our sponsor. Alright,
we're back, and here's another one about Ford and fire,
(20:17):
which man seems like the trend here towards the end,
and this is a recent one. Yeah it is. So
this is uh, this is affects the two thousand four escape.
It had fuel lines that were cracking and spilling gasoline
onto the engine, which I think everybody already knows this.
I mean, you pour gasoline onto a hot engine, you
know what's going to happen. It's another fire. So again,
(20:37):
these are these fuel lines that were cracking and failing.
Of course led to just eight another huge mass of
fires in another Forward product. But luckily there's one big
advantage that comes out of this. We have a much
more sophisticated and efficient vehicle recall system nowadays. So it
was it was what happened faster? Yeah, yeah, and only
(21:01):
about eleven thousand, five hundred escapes had to be recalled.
And the best news, no one was hurt. Oh, it's
really good. That's a it's again super fortunate with these
last two situations, the last two fire situations, right, because
that kind of stuff is not something you want to
mess around with. But again, eleven eleven dred escapes. That's
getting on top of things pretty quick. I I commend
(21:21):
Forward for doing that so quickly. Yeah, absolutely good work.
And now let's go to two. Yeah, back to GM again, right,
and another steering issue. Alright, So here's the deal. Um
in GM had to recall five point eight million cars
with the issue that we're about to tell you about.
And UM, so here's what happened. Um, there'd be an
(21:44):
out of control situation in general motors cars and it
was caused because it was caused by um, a suspension
both that would come loose and disable the steering column. Right. Yeah,
And the problem with that is it's no longer really
an issue of traction at that point. Yeah, you're just
along for the ride at that point, right, Hope that
it stops in a nice place, nice soft spot oncoming vehicle. Yeah.
(22:10):
I mean, so imagine yourself in this situation. You've got
like a carload of people or you know, you're carrying
a very heavy load or something, and um, suddenly you're
completely out of control of vehicle. I mean, you can
stop it, you can accelerate, but why would you accelerate
but you you don't. But you just cannot steer left
or right either way. Nothing's happening is unresponsive. Um. That's
got to be terrifying. I mean you also, even even
(22:33):
stopping would be kind of terrifying because if you're in
the wrong situation, what's behind you, what's coming up behind
you or something. Let's say you do a panic stop
or something. That's not always the best answer either. So
sometimes you just had to ride this thing out and
you know, maybe close to where you thought you could
pull over safely. I don't know, what, do you even
have enough time in that situation? Benef like, just suddenly
the steering was unresponsive. I mean, I don't even know.
(22:55):
I mean, I guess it's it's it's case by case.
I mean, the first thing to do if the brakes
are still working is too because okay, if your vehicle
is unsteerable at that point, then it becomes a danger
to everything around you. So if it's unsteerable and you're
doing seventy or something, then you have to I would say,
(23:16):
you don't. You can't panic stop. That's a scary part.
You just have to try to gradually slow down. And
not only that, I mean once you do that, you're
stuck in traffic. Maybe if you're you know, on our
road that's long and straight. Um, even if you're trying
to push it over to the side, you would have
a difficult time getting it off to the side of
the road. I mean, this is this really leads to
a huge, huge problem for motorists, huge problem. And of course,
(23:37):
of course, um Man, five point eight million vehicles were
affected with this, so that's a that's a big one
for them, all right, the first one, the one, the
one on our listener, they the last one. I guess.
I wonder if people can guess this one. Maybe how
about we give them five seconds to think about it. Well,
I'll still talk, but I'm giving you five seconds to
what it might be. Number one and it kind of
goes back to um. Well, the situation we talked about
(23:59):
four before. It is the Ford Pinto fires. Yes, Ford's
most famous fires, so one of the most famous recalls
of all time from one to ninety five. The Ford
Pinto and the Mercury Bobcat ended up being recalled in
nineteen seventy eight because the gas tank could rupture when
(24:20):
there was a rear end explosion. Yeah and okay, so
they nailed this down to the I think it was
a bolt in the bumper or something like that that
was causing the rupture to happen. And the crazy thing
about this is that maybe the most crazy thing about
this is that the attitude of the Ford executed at
the time about this um looking back on this. They
they went through all the numbers, and they decided that
(24:42):
it was cheaper to pay settlements to people who were
already you know, who were injured by this or killed
by the defect than it was to redesign the fuel
tank and to actually do a recall to replace it. Now,
that's that's pretty scary. It's a conspiracy, it really is.
It's scary to think about that. And so you know,
there's a lot of a lot of book outrage about
this and uh, and of course books were written about it.
(25:03):
There were I mean, there were a lot of a
lot of fallout over this issue, right right. Ford really
took a hit as far as um popularity went at
the time. And of course the way people generally saw,
you know, well, the exects that made the decisions, of course,
I mean they were pointed out, they knew who it was. Um,
that's just a bad, bad news story all around, before
the Pinto story, right, And I think it's time for
(25:26):
us to do a little bit of a retroactive disclaimer here. Uh.
And then it is the following. Car manufacturers are by
no means evil, you know what I mean? They do great,
amazing things and have factions or people at the top
during certain eras made horrible decisions. Yeah, clearly, we see
(25:46):
several examples of that in this episode. But also building
a car we talked about sometimes it's such a tremendously
complicated thing. If anything, it's almost surprised that there aren't
more defects and recalls, and a lot of them are
really minor. Yeah, the ones that you won't hear about
two because you know, there's something like five recalls every
(26:09):
year in recent years, and it's and it could be
very very minor, like we said, but you know, with
the loose wipers or um, could be something that's major.
Like we got the air bag situation going on right
now with Takata, right and the you know, the the
faulty air bags that are that are sending shrapnel into
the cabin when they explode. That's that's terrible news. Um.
And uh so that's happening right now as we're as
(26:29):
we're talking, and more and more vehicles are being affected
by that because that's a supplier that's given that's that's
using that product in many different product lines. So big,
big situation there. But that's all happening right now. And
then there's just all these other small ones that you
don't really really hear about. And uh yeah, I'm surprised
that there we don't hear about more. I guess, um
a lot of people will get a flyer, you know,
(26:50):
sent to their house that says, you know, bringing in
there have been three recalls. You know, we want to
change the anchor bolts on your seat belts, or we
wanted to do something really really minor like that, but
it's important to us. You need to get it done right.
And also with the current um, with the current evolution
of the recall system here in the US, with manufacturers,
(27:11):
it's much better for the manufacturer to be proactive about it.
Oh yeah, they think there's a problem with something, they're
gonna have you come in and I you know, I
didn't mean to downplay the anchor bolt in the seatbelt
or anything like that. I mean that's serious. But um,
you know, there's some really really minor things that you know,
are not safety driven that you know, they just want
to take care of because it's it's on their their
names on that product and it's out there and they
(27:32):
don't want it to be ashamed of it. They don't
want it to be faulty. So again they take care
of it up front, and you know it's the right
thing to do, really absolutely, Um, and it's a smart
move really, I think on their part, it's a good
pr move. You know. Well, yes, it's not all entirely
all true as well, that that's true. I mean, it
could lead to legal issues down the road that they're
costing them. And of course, I mean there's still, whether
(27:54):
you like to believe it or not, even with this
minor stuff, there's still a lot of that number crunching
going on, like they were doing it for not so
much necessarily with the I think now they know better
than to mess around with that when they're you know,
injuries and deaths involved and they know that it's going
to happen. Uh, they don't do that anymore. But now, um,
it's more like, well this recall this fix of this. Uh,
(28:15):
well again, whatever piece we're going to talk about here,
maybe the head rest on a on a car that
that's a little giggly, a little loose or something, you know, Yeah,
something has to some some kind of number crunching still
has I would think so, yeah, but does it make
sense for us to bring this back just for you know,
just to keep our name, you know, solid in the HI.
Probably probably it is. But again there is some back
(28:36):
and forth with this this formula. Right, but here's the here,
here's the other thing that makes me think of to
end on a positive note, No, we should do we
should do a podcast on the most dependable car, Like,
what is the most reliable dependable car? I wonder if
we could find that. I can already, Oh, lazy gentlemen,
I could already hear some of you hopping on the
(28:59):
keyboard to write in about the most dependable car, the
most dependable car in your history. I guess maybe that Yeah,
that's a good one. Well, yeah, that's that's good, Like
the one that just gave you no problems at all,
or the one that gave everybody no problems at all.
Like what's the is there one? Is there one that
never had a recall? Never? Uh? And we're talking about
it in the days that recalls of course, you know,
(29:19):
since the un ht s A has been around. I
don't know, I'm over explaining this, Bennetts. So let's just
have people right in with maybe the car that they
had the least problems with most dependable, and then maybe
we'll do some investigating on our side and see if
we can find if there's one that has, you know,
a few or no recalls, maybe not your favorite car
necessarily ladies and gentlemen. And I feel like we have
(29:40):
to say that because most people's favorite cars just have
a boatload of problems. Oh yeah, it doesn't matter, It
doesn't matter, you're it's it's worth it to them, right, Yeah,
cars like that where I knew it was gonna be trouble,
but I still loved it. I still miss my money, Carlo,
although it maybe I could have been ten minutes late
to everything. That car practically made you with my can
(30:00):
you know, oh man, you know I'm still uh, I
still want one of those first or second Jim Monty Carlos.
I'm hooked. Yeah, And I know they're not the best cars, Okay, everybody,
I've read your email. I know it's not. Yeah, that
will that will not be the one that comes up
with the at least a number of problems. No, well not,
(30:21):
but hopefully you will let us know. Uh, and maybe
we can bring some of those voices to the air
so you can tell your fellow listeners or warn your
fellow listeners uh. In the meantime, we are going to
head out. If you'd like to learn more about the
recall system in the US, the history and the present,
and a little bit about the future, then check out
(30:42):
our earlier audio episode. It is available at our website
car Stuff Show dot com, along with every single other
audio episode we've ever done. Don't believe iTunes they'll only
give you like what the first three or something something
like that, But we have many more and check them
out if you go to the really early ones. Just
(31:04):
we're still getting our sea legs deep breaks to be kind. Yeah,
And in the meantime, you can find Scott and I
on Facebook and Twitter when we are car Stuff h
s W. You can see some of the things that
we encounter in our our daily rifling through the world
of all things automotive. And if you have an episode
you would like us to cover in the future, you
(31:26):
can write to us direct. We are car Stuff at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think. Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com. M
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from how Stuff Works dot Com. I'd welcome
to car Stuff. I'm Scott. And then we are joined,
of course by our super producer today Noel Pump your
brakes Brown, No Ignition Fire Brown. Yeah, I've been that's
(00:25):
a good one. I've been thinking of the phrase pump
your brakes and you know, sometimes I will go through
these phases, ladies and gentlemen, where I obsessively or continually
over use a phrase like coolier jets, coolier jets. Pump
your brakes is uh, something that really gets the strangers
(00:45):
if you say it, it seems kind of offensive. It's
like calling someone you don't know bozo. It's like it's
like yelling at them hey three times, like hey hey yeah.
But uh, with that mind, we're picking Ignition Fire or
pump your brakes as nicknames from role here because it's
appropriate for today's episode. It is. Yeah, we're gonna be
(01:07):
talking about some of the most terrifying vehicle manufacturing defects.
So because straight in the factory, these are the problems
that are I guess pre installed in your car right
from the right, from the from the get go. Yeah,
and we'd like to go ahead and point your attention
to our earlier episode on how car recalls work. Uh,
that has a lot of information that's more large scale,
(01:30):
I guess some of the calculations that car manufacturers undergo
when they are assessing a defect or whether to make
a recall. Yeah. And if you want to take a
second look at anything that we're gonna talk about today,
that we're following along with one of the articles from
our site, from how stuff works dot com, and it
is called ten most terrifying vehicle manufacturing defects rather and uh,
(01:51):
we're gonna just kind of go through this list from
ten to one. And UM, I don't know if they
necessarily go by how scary they are, because there are
some really scary ones all along throughout here. I mean,
there's something that are not so scary they just have
huge numbers. But we're gonna stick with the scary ones
I think today. UM, just for an example, Ben, right
here in the intro of this article, it says that
(02:11):
you know, here's an example of a defect that's not
so scary. Um, in nineteen seventy two, there's a recall
three point seven million vehicles from Volkswagen that were built
between n and nineteen sixty nine, and the reason that
they were brought back, all three point seven million of them,
was because they had loose windshield wipers. So see that's
not very scary, right, loose windshield wipers. It's an annoyance. Well,
(02:32):
how heavy are the wipers flinging off of there at
a at a high rate of speed? Now they're just loose,
and so you bring it back in and tighten it up.
No problem. But then skip forward Toteen where General Motors
had an ignition switch recall. Uh, it gets a lot
more pressed because it affected slightly fewer vehicles at two
point six million. But they believe that that recall, or
(02:54):
that that faulty product was caused the cause of thirteen death,
so significant different it's in in the severity of this
whole thing, right, you get you get the point. And
that's the kind of recall that we're gonna be talking
about today. Are the ones that UM had the potential
to cause some harm if they didn't. Well, let's go
into number ten. This is something that Scott and I
are both familiar with because this occurred in the lifetime
(03:20):
of our show yea at the very beginning, right, Yeah,
I think we're a high speed stuff. I think it
was happening right when we started this podcast. So you
may catch some early mention of this early on. I
think we kind of stayed away from it. Uh we
had a sponsorship going on there that didn't it didn't
look too uh well, I didn't want us to talk
about it all that much. It wasn't directly with us either. No, no,
it wasn't. So anyways, well let's talk about this. So
(03:43):
this is this is going back to when was it
right around two thowo nine and maybe even a little
bit earlier than that, because, um, the problem was here.
Here's the problem. Toyota was known as a very reliable vehicle,
has been known as that all along and it still
is really and they do great work in safety. And
usually when you hop in a Toyota, you know that
(04:06):
it will accelerate only when you intend it to. Yeah,
And so we started getting these reports and I'm sure
a lot of people can remember this, these reports of
unintended acceleration happening and people calling while they're on the
freeway and they can't stop. And there was kind of
like a panic going on, and if you had one
of these cars, you were afraid to drive it. You
just didn't want you didn't want anything to do with
this because it sounds terrifying. It is terrifying. Um. It
(04:29):
caused thirty one deaths, thirty one and this was the
claim that these these cars would not stop accelerating once
they start going. And Toyota didn't really help itself in
some of these situations because first they said that driver
it was user error essentially, then the numbers kept adding
(04:50):
up and they said, well, it's a it's a faulty
floor mat. Oh yeah. They said that the floor mat
was interfering with the accelerator pedal and that was what
they recalled. So they would bring it back in. They
would fix the floor mats in two thousand nine, and
that was that was supposed to be the solution, and
I thought that was it, but then it just continued
to happen. So in two thousand ten they finally issued
a recall for a sticky pedal mechanism. So nine million
(05:13):
cars in total were recalled for this, and it didn't
quite go away there because Toyota had to pay a
one point two billion dollar settlement for misleading investigators in
that whole situation. So it cost them big in the end.
It costs some people their lives as well. Um, and
it was awesome. How bad is that for your reputation?
Reputation too? I mean just awful. It's one of those
(05:34):
things where people still talk about it. People still remember,
we're talking about it now. Um. But you know, honestly,
the most of their product is still solid, it's still
it still works, right, and they fixed the problem. It's
just how long does it take? I mean, you can
point fingers and you know what. Let's not even go
down that path. Let's just let's go to the next one.
I just want to say, I just want to say
that they still weren't as bad as Comcast, which remains
(05:56):
the number one least popular company in this country. I
think you're right. I think yeah, all right, So just
just you guys know it's not gonna get Comcast bad?
Could I say that? I guess so? Sure, a little
personal vendetta, maybe think something going on there? All right,
So let's move on to number nine Firestone. Here's another
(06:17):
one that's very recent history, and I bet a lot
of people remember this. But in the nine nineties. Of
course SUVs were huge. They still are kind of huge.
I mean more crossovers now, but SUVs were really kind
of at their height of popularity at this point in
the nineties. And one of the most popular vehicles that
Ford had was the Explorer at the time, the great vehicle,
full size Explorer, big vehicle, really good. Yeah, a lot
(06:38):
of people that I knew had them. And the problem
was they paired up with Man tire manufacturer of Firestone,
which is nothing new and for its history or anything,
but they paired up with them on a specific type
of tire and you know, of course it's a it's
a truck tire, a light plate duty truck tire, pretty big.
The problem was that the tread would separate from the
steel belts and this means that the tire will blow.
(07:00):
So a lot of as we point out in the article,
a lot of the drivers in SUVs in the nineties
and maybe you know, I'm gonna say even today have
these vehicles, but they use them just as their daily driver.
They're not going off roade, didn't even get on gravel,
and it's it's always on pavement, and you know, you
encounter a pothole or something and that's about the most
(07:23):
or you know what speed bump and you know it's
really obnoxious when they slow down at the speed bump.
I know that. Think that grinds your gears, grind my
gears so much. Man. Remember when our office was next
to uh those malls, big really fancy malls, and I
always come back, uh just steam. I was ticked off, man,
(07:43):
it was I don't see it that way. I don't
see it that. It doesn't matter how big the truck is.
It seems like they should still take the speed bump slow.
I mean that's the intended well they should slow down. Yeah,
but they Okay, you're right, you're right, you're absolutely right.
I can see you. You're formulating something over there. No, no,
you're running out. You want to take the take the
loss on this one. It's just uh, I think it's
(08:04):
you know, it's like what we talked about with um
cars that were black sheet of their family. Like if
you get a vehicle for an intended purpose, of course,
it's your money and it's your car. But if I
see somebody in a four by four slowing down as
though they're driving, uh, gingerly, gingerly scooting a ferrari over something.
(08:27):
It just doesn't make sense. I kind of get that
it was mainly hummers, but mainly humbes. Okay, I understand,
but it seems like it does seem that the majority
of of off roading has done at very very low speeds.
To you crawl over things, you don't necessarily hit them
at top speed. But regardless of personal pet peeves and stuff,
which again are entirely subjective, everyone who has a set
(08:52):
at tires deserves for them not to blow up. Oh yeah,
that's for sure. And and the problem was, you know,
you're driving along there on the pavement and uh, and
the tire blows on you. Most of the drivers didn't
have really any experience of what to do if a
tire blows. I mean, you just it's something that until
it happens to you, it's it's a foreign it's a
foreign thing to you. You You just don't know what to do,
how to react. And here's the problem. A lot of
(09:13):
the drivers were also in their first maybe tall vehicle.
You know, not not every driver, of course, but you
know a lot of them are just kind of experiencing
this at that height, that ride height for the first time.
So it's it's a little bit jarring when that happens,
and they would overcorrect spin the wheel, you know, in
the overcorrection, the vehicle would flip over. And so here's
the problem. Like it was like, you know, the tire
(09:37):
manufacturer was blaming Ford and they were drying. They were
blaming the the owners because they were overreacting to know
how to handle the situation. It was just this back
and forth between who's at fault for all three of
those and uh, eventually it kind of came out and
they came out and the watch that Yeah, it was
a faulty tire that was the problem. It wasn't necessarily
that um uh there was a problem with the Ford
Explorer design or anything like that. It wasn't a problem.
(09:59):
And I guess it is you know, driver fault that
they didn't know how to correct the you know, the
situation when it happened. But but again, then you can't
expect people to in an ideal world, everyone would know
the correct maneuvers, but people are not expecting to have
explosive tires. Yeah, I guess so. I mean that's that's
(10:19):
like an invasive that's an invasive move. That's more of
a defensive driving situation is something you would learn, ye
recovery move You learn that in like maybe an advanced
driving school or some kind you know, like that how
to handle that kind of situation. You don't learn that
in drivers, No, you don't, although you should, you really should.
How to how to steer out of a skid, that
type of thing. Yeah, I think I think a lot
(10:39):
of people do get how to how to correct a
swerve without over correcting, but or skid. As you said,
but this is a big deal. I mean this. The
the flipover resulted in two hundred deaths. Over two hundred
deaths and six point five million Firestone tires were recalled,
but Ford also offered to replace an additional thirteen million.
(11:00):
Thirteen million tires they had to replace. Crazy, but yeah,
that's a that's in addition to the six and a
half million of fire Stone brought back. Oh man, that's
a lot of tires. Al right, So you know what,
let's how about this before we go on to our
our next one. Let's so let's stop for a word
from our sponsor. All right, and we're back and we're
on number eight of our list. Man. So Ford had
(11:20):
uh Ford had a string of bad luck, really a
string of bad luck. That's a way. That's a way
to put it. So you're familiar with the Lincoln Navigator, right,
Oh yeah, the Lincoln Navigator, which I know has is
device of at times amongst both uh fans of Lincoln
and fans of SUVs, is the most recalled of all
(11:42):
Ford vehicles. Really. Yeah. Oh I never would have guessed
that due to their cruise control conflagration. Oh oh, that's right. Okay,
So that's what this one is about. It is about
the fires, and uh, this is a big deal between
and two thousand four a total of fourteen point nine
million in vehicles. Uh. That that cruise controls which would
(12:03):
short out and catch fire. And uh, the thing was crazy,
thing is you didn't really have to be you know,
you might say, well, I don't use cruise control, right,
it wouldn't have affected me. You didn't have to be
done that. They would just short out on its own
and catch fire. So you could just be driving along
doing whatever it is you do, no cruise control activated,
suddenly there's a fire. And Ford, to be clear, this
(12:23):
is another component that Ford did not build. These were
actually built by Texas instruments. Yes, that Texas instruments. The
folks who have had the same calculator that everyone uses
at some point in middle or high school. Oh yeah,
that's right. I remember those. I likely did. Yeah, man,
I had calculators when I was at that age, you know,
(12:44):
and grade school in high school. I was scandalized by
how expensive it was. Yeah, of course. But yeah, so
they manufactured this. Uh, this was the largest recall in history. Yeah,
what I would say, almost almost fifteen million vehicles, right, huge?
All right, So let's shift manufacturers here, Ben, We're gonna
(13:05):
go over to General Motors for a bit, how about that? Alright?
So General Motors had an issue with um engine mounts
at some point in their history, and it was a
long time ago. Actually, it's one of the earliest recalls really,
and it was a big one. Again, but the fix
on this one is surprising when when you hear what's
going on. Now. The the image that's used here in
this in this article is of the n KMARO SS.
(13:27):
But we're talking about cars generally, a lot of different
cars that had great, big vat engines. So I understand
that there's a lot of a lot of torque happening
under the wood there, right, all right, So here's what happened.
The engine mounts were bad. They were just simply bad.
They would they would break, and you know that's bad enough, right,
But the under the hood, the engine would twist when
you're trying to accelerate, and it would also like it
(13:48):
would sometimes accelerate when you didn't want to want it
to accelerate because all the linkages were being pulled and twisted.
And in addition to that, if it's accelerating when it's
not supposed to be, that throws everything else off. And
sometimes it would it would disable to break a sist. Right,
So here's the strange fix they had. And I kind
of like this is a mcdever thing. I like the
(14:08):
ingenuity of it, but just how they did. So we
let's say you took your maybe your sixty eight Camaro
SS or whatever into the dealership. The mechanic wouldn't actually
replace the mounts. They would just anchor the engine to
the firewall so that when the mounts screwed up, the
(14:30):
engine wouldn't twist around. It's terrible, but the price was
very reasonable. What was the price thirty bucks already fix
for something this huge. I mean they could cause a
lot of damage. Now, imagine that you're you're driving down
the road in your car is accelerating when it's not
supposed to be, and the break assist goes out. So
you've got a pretty heavy vehicle you're trying to stop
with with manual brakes, probably drum brakes, if I had
(14:53):
to guess. In a lot of cases, not every case,
of course, you know, some had disc but and a
lot of cases they were drum break anyway, difficult situation. Uh,
let's continue with this Hall of infamy, my friends. Toyota's
unintended acceleration was definitely an issue. However, it was not
the first time something like this occurred. No, for those
of you that remember the nineteen eighties, Uh, the out
(15:15):
five thousand was maybe the maybe one of the first
ones that you heard about having this situation. And I'm
sure that it happened in the past. Now a lot
of Uh, here's what would happen. The driver would shift
out of park and try to ease out of the
driveway or into parking space, maybe in the garage or whatever.
And what would happen is the car would just kind
of well again, unintended acceleration. It would just take off
(15:36):
on its own. It was almost like it had a
life of its own. It would it would lurch forward.
So I think that I think they at first denied
that anything was going on, and they said that, you know, well,
maybe it's the owner. The pedals are du clos together.
The owners are putting your foot on two different pedals
at one time. And there were a lot of back
and forth about this, and of course the owners were saying, no, no,
I did it right. There's something here. It was lurching forward.
(15:57):
It did it on its own. Um. It took him
a while to get this one kind of meshed out,
like exactly what happened or hammered out. Audi recalled the
cars three times in n eighty three and then again
in nineteen and finally they got it right, but the
problem was out. He said, you know what we're done. Yeah,
it was like the ticket. Did they definitely get it
(16:18):
right or did they get so sour on the problem
that they quit because they stopped selling it in selling
the car in the US in the US. Now that's
that's that's the out five thousand model in the United States,
And was no more. I wonder if this problem persisted overseas.
I wonder if it continued or if it truly was
something that was, you know, an issue with the thing.
I mean, it's one of these things like you've heard
(16:39):
about this and and there's so much back and forth
it's really tough to nail down exactly what was going
on there. But um, I think they finally fessed up
that there was something going there's an issue, well manufacturing issue. Comparatively,
it affected a few cars, you know, less than four
hundred thousand. Yeah fo, I'm just saying compared to millions
and millions, you get compared to four or the Navigator
(17:00):
with their fifteen million or something like that. So let's
move on to something else here. Uh, this one is
one that I didn't see coming, you know, I wasn't
aware of this. But it's back with General motors. So
in the early nineteen seventies, stones could get lodged between
the steering assembly and the frame and it would prevent
the car from turning left. Unbelievable. This would be another
(17:24):
just terrifying one if you were on the road and
this happened, right, So, so imagine just driving over a
gravel road and then you you pull out under the
main road, you turn right to get on the road
or whatever, and I first erect it back. Yeah yeah,
or then you know, the road kind of veers to
the left a little bit and you keep going straight
right into the ditch. I mean that's the kind of
situation that could happen or um, I don't know what angle.
You know it held you back from from going left
(17:44):
or not. But um man, it was because it was
a really easy thing for GM to fix. Um. But
it had to have been just terrifying, but it was.
The recall was done in nineteen seventy three. It's pretty big.
It affected three point seven million vehicles across their lineup,
so a lot of different cars were involved. Um. But man,
that's a scary one. That's it's weird that that could
ever even happen, or how they even figured out that
(18:06):
was happening, And that's that's something that just put yourself
back in three and imagine them trying to figure out
what was going on there and how that happened. Insane. Yeah,
it's pretty it's pretty good that they were able to
nail it down to just that you know, this is
the condition that causes it, and how here's how we're
gonna fix it, you know, without being able to communicate
with all the other dealerships quite as easy as they
can now. I want to I want to set the
(18:27):
scene for this next one because I like the way
we get into it. Imagine you're in your house, in
your bed, sleeping soundly, light snooze. Maybe you got one
of those little uh noisemaker things on gain sounds or
something very peaceful time, very nice. You've got a ford
because you're doing pretty well in life. Your vehicles in
your garage, and it's also just hanging out, just waiting
(18:50):
for the wee hours to pass until that is the
ignition in your car starts itself up, shorts out the
electrical system and melts this deering column. That is some
Christine stuff right there. That's scary. You're lucky. Yeah, well,
you know here's the thing. Like it could be parked
in your garage and uh and burn your house down.
That's one thing that's terrifying. I mean, it could be
(19:11):
you know, just the car itself catches fire, or it
could be parked in a parking lot somewhere, you know,
you know, if your park at work or something and
come back out and you find your car, you know,
a little flem bayh a little carbonC what they called carbecue. Yes,
unfortunately that yeah, I guess so so and this is
a big one too. So Ford put this exact ignition,
the one that caught fire in seven point nine million
(19:33):
vehicles between and nineteen three, and then they didn't recall
them until nineteen so there was an issue all that time.
That's a long long time. Crazy enough, though, no one
died from this particular fault. Yeah, from this defect, I guess,
you know, this manufacturing defect. But I mean it's very lucky. Yeah,
it's very very it's frankly, it's bucking statistics that no
(19:56):
one passed away. Absolutely, And now we are I was
going to say, without further ado, but with a bit
of a do we are going to discuss the top
three most terrifying manufacturing defects. But first weird from our sponsor. Alright,
we're back, and here's another one about Ford and fire,
(20:17):
which man seems like the trend here towards the end,
and this is a recent one. Yeah it is. So
this is uh, this is affects the two thousand four escape.
It had fuel lines that were cracking and spilling gasoline
onto the engine, which I think everybody already knows this.
I mean, you pour gasoline onto a hot engine, you
know what's going to happen. It's another fire. So again,
(20:37):
these are these fuel lines that were cracking and failing.
Of course led to just eight another huge mass of
fires in another Forward product. But luckily there's one big
advantage that comes out of this. We have a much
more sophisticated and efficient vehicle recall system nowadays. So it
was it was what happened faster? Yeah, yeah, and only
(21:01):
about eleven thousand, five hundred escapes had to be recalled.
And the best news, no one was hurt. Oh, it's
really good. That's a it's again super fortunate with these
last two situations, the last two fire situations, right, because
that kind of stuff is not something you want to
mess around with. But again, eleven eleven dred escapes. That's
getting on top of things pretty quick. I I commend
(21:21):
Forward for doing that so quickly. Yeah, absolutely good work.
And now let's go to two. Yeah, back to GM again, right,
and another steering issue. Alright, So here's the deal. Um
in GM had to recall five point eight million cars
with the issue that we're about to tell you about.
And UM, so here's what happened. Um, there'd be an
(21:44):
out of control situation in general motors cars and it
was caused because it was caused by um, a suspension
both that would come loose and disable the steering column. Right. Yeah,
And the problem with that is it's no longer really
an issue of traction at that point. Yeah, you're just
along for the ride at that point, right, Hope that
it stops in a nice place, nice soft spot oncoming vehicle. Yeah.
(22:10):
I mean, so imagine yourself in this situation. You've got
like a carload of people or you know, you're carrying
a very heavy load or something, and um, suddenly you're
completely out of control of vehicle. I mean, you can
stop it, you can accelerate, but why would you accelerate
but you you don't. But you just cannot steer left
or right either way. Nothing's happening is unresponsive. Um. That's
got to be terrifying. I mean you also, even even
(22:33):
stopping would be kind of terrifying because if you're in
the wrong situation, what's behind you, what's coming up behind
you or something. Let's say you do a panic stop
or something. That's not always the best answer either. So
sometimes you just had to ride this thing out and
you know, maybe close to where you thought you could
pull over safely. I don't know, what, do you even
have enough time in that situation? Benef like, just suddenly
the steering was unresponsive. I mean, I don't even know.
(22:55):
I mean, I guess it's it's it's case by case.
I mean, the first thing to do if the brakes
are still working is too because okay, if your vehicle
is unsteerable at that point, then it becomes a danger
to everything around you. So if it's unsteerable and you're
doing seventy or something, then you have to I would say,
(23:16):
you don't. You can't panic stop. That's a scary part.
You just have to try to gradually slow down. And
not only that, I mean once you do that, you're
stuck in traffic. Maybe if you're you know, on our
road that's long and straight. Um, even if you're trying
to push it over to the side, you would have
a difficult time getting it off to the side of
the road. I mean, this is this really leads to
a huge, huge problem for motorists, huge problem. And of course,
(23:37):
of course, um Man, five point eight million vehicles were
affected with this, so that's a that's a big one
for them, all right, the first one, the one, the
one on our listener, they the last one. I guess.
I wonder if people can guess this one. Maybe how
about we give them five seconds to think about it. Well,
I'll still talk, but I'm giving you five seconds to
what it might be. Number one and it kind of
goes back to um. Well, the situation we talked about
(23:59):
four before. It is the Ford Pinto fires. Yes, Ford's
most famous fires, so one of the most famous recalls
of all time from one to ninety five. The Ford
Pinto and the Mercury Bobcat ended up being recalled in
nineteen seventy eight because the gas tank could rupture when
(24:20):
there was a rear end explosion. Yeah and okay, so
they nailed this down to the I think it was
a bolt in the bumper or something like that that
was causing the rupture to happen. And the crazy thing
about this is that maybe the most crazy thing about
this is that the attitude of the Ford executed at
the time about this um looking back on this. They
they went through all the numbers, and they decided that
(24:42):
it was cheaper to pay settlements to people who were
already you know, who were injured by this or killed
by the defect than it was to redesign the fuel
tank and to actually do a recall to replace it. Now,
that's that's pretty scary. It's a conspiracy, it really is.
It's scary to think about that. And so you know,
there's a lot of a lot of book outrage about
this and uh, and of course books were written about it.
(25:03):
There were I mean, there were a lot of a
lot of fallout over this issue, right right. Ford really
took a hit as far as um popularity went at
the time. And of course the way people generally saw,
you know, well, the exects that made the decisions, of course,
I mean they were pointed out, they knew who it was. Um,
that's just a bad, bad news story all around, before
the Pinto story, right, And I think it's time for
(25:26):
us to do a little bit of a retroactive disclaimer here. Uh.
And then it is the following. Car manufacturers are by
no means evil, you know what I mean? They do great,
amazing things and have factions or people at the top
during certain eras made horrible decisions. Yeah, clearly, we see
(25:46):
several examples of that in this episode. But also building
a car we talked about sometimes it's such a tremendously
complicated thing. If anything, it's almost surprised that there aren't
more defects and recalls, and a lot of them are
really minor. Yeah, the ones that you won't hear about
two because you know, there's something like five recalls every
(26:09):
year in recent years, and it's and it could be
very very minor, like we said, but you know, with
the loose wipers or um, could be something that's major.
Like we got the air bag situation going on right
now with Takata, right and the you know, the the
faulty air bags that are that are sending shrapnel into
the cabin when they explode. That's that's terrible news. Um.
And uh so that's happening right now as we're as
(26:29):
we're talking, and more and more vehicles are being affected
by that because that's a supplier that's given that's that's
using that product in many different product lines. So big,
big situation there. But that's all happening right now. And
then there's just all these other small ones that you
don't really really hear about. And uh yeah, I'm surprised
that there we don't hear about more. I guess, um
a lot of people will get a flyer, you know,
(26:50):
sent to their house that says, you know, bringing in
there have been three recalls. You know, we want to
change the anchor bolts on your seat belts, or we
wanted to do something really really minor like that, but
it's important to us. You need to get it done right.
And also with the current um, with the current evolution
of the recall system here in the US, with manufacturers,
(27:11):
it's much better for the manufacturer to be proactive about it.
Oh yeah, they think there's a problem with something, they're
gonna have you come in and I you know, I
didn't mean to downplay the anchor bolt in the seatbelt
or anything like that. I mean that's serious. But um,
you know, there's some really really minor things that you know,
are not safety driven that you know, they just want
to take care of because it's it's on their their
names on that product and it's out there and they
(27:32):
don't want it to be ashamed of it. They don't
want it to be faulty. So again they take care
of it up front, and you know it's the right
thing to do, really absolutely, Um, and it's a smart
move really, I think on their part, it's a good
pr move. You know. Well, yes, it's not all entirely
all true as well, that that's true. I mean, it
could lead to legal issues down the road that they're
costing them. And of course, I mean there's still, whether
(27:54):
you like to believe it or not, even with this
minor stuff, there's still a lot of that number crunching
going on, like they were doing it for not so
much necessarily with the I think now they know better
than to mess around with that when they're you know,
injuries and deaths involved and they know that it's going
to happen. Uh, they don't do that anymore. But now, um,
it's more like, well this recall this fix of this. Uh,
(28:15):
well again, whatever piece we're going to talk about here,
maybe the head rest on a on a car that
that's a little giggly, a little loose or something, you know, Yeah,
something has to some some kind of number crunching still
has I would think so, yeah, but does it make
sense for us to bring this back just for you know,
just to keep our name, you know, solid in the HI.
Probably probably it is. But again there is some back
(28:36):
and forth with this this formula. Right, but here's the here,
here's the other thing that makes me think of to
end on a positive note, No, we should do we
should do a podcast on the most dependable car, Like,
what is the most reliable dependable car? I wonder if
we could find that. I can already, Oh, lazy gentlemen,
I could already hear some of you hopping on the
(28:59):
keyboard to write in about the most dependable car, the
most dependable car in your history. I guess maybe that Yeah,
that's a good one. Well, yeah, that's that's good, Like
the one that just gave you no problems at all,
or the one that gave everybody no problems at all.
Like what's the is there one? Is there one that
never had a recall? Never? Uh? And we're talking about
it in the days that recalls of course, you know,
(29:19):
since the un ht s A has been around. I
don't know, I'm over explaining this, Bennetts. So let's just
have people right in with maybe the car that they
had the least problems with most dependable, and then maybe
we'll do some investigating on our side and see if
we can find if there's one that has, you know,
a few or no recalls, maybe not your favorite car
necessarily ladies and gentlemen. And I feel like we have
(29:40):
to say that because most people's favorite cars just have
a boatload of problems. Oh yeah, it doesn't matter, It
doesn't matter, you're it's it's worth it to them, right, Yeah,
cars like that where I knew it was gonna be trouble,
but I still loved it. I still miss my money, Carlo,
although it maybe I could have been ten minutes late
to everything. That car practically made you with my can
(30:00):
you know, oh man, you know I'm still uh, I
still want one of those first or second Jim Monty Carlos.
I'm hooked. Yeah, And I know they're not the best cars, Okay, everybody,
I've read your email. I know it's not. Yeah, that
will that will not be the one that comes up
with the at least a number of problems. No, well not,
(30:21):
but hopefully you will let us know. Uh, and maybe
we can bring some of those voices to the air
so you can tell your fellow listeners or warn your
fellow listeners uh. In the meantime, we are going to
head out. If you'd like to learn more about the
recall system in the US, the history and the present,
and a little bit about the future, then check out
(30:42):
our earlier audio episode. It is available at our website
car Stuff Show dot com, along with every single other
audio episode we've ever done. Don't believe iTunes they'll only
give you like what the first three or something something
like that, But we have many more and check them
out if you go to the really early ones. Just
(31:04):
we're still getting our sea legs deep breaks to be kind. Yeah,
And in the meantime, you can find Scott and I
on Facebook and Twitter when we are car Stuff h
s W. You can see some of the things that
we encounter in our our daily rifling through the world
of all things automotive. And if you have an episode
you would like us to cover in the future, you
(31:26):
can write to us direct. We are car Stuff at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think. Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com. M
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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