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FORD’S RECENT WARRANTY COSTS WAY DOWN

“Steady vehicle quality improvement in recent years is beginning to translate into significant savings for the company and far fewer trips by customers to the repair shop.” Which company are we discussing? Land Rover, or perhaps perennial quality leader Toyota? Maybe an oddball like Ferrari or a mass market player like Fiat? 

Wrong. This is Ford Motor Company. After an in-depth effort making quality a top priority, Ford has succeeded. Don’t just take their one sentence as proof – keep reading for proof in Numbers.
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1,200,000,000 – reduction in Ford’s warranty costs over the last two years

50 – percentage drop in the warranty repair rate for Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury vehicles in the United States since 2004

75 – percentage of Ford’s American-market vehicles which improved their number of  “things gone wrong”

66.6 – percentage increase in Ford’s typical warranty length (3 years to 5 years) during this time of drastic warranty claim reduction
2005 – year after which every single Ford vehicle showed improved quality statistics compared with its predecessor

40,000 – distinct design standards verified by Ford in its Virtual Engineer Lab, assuring that quality at Ford isn’t an afterthought

12 – total Variability Reduction Teams responsible for an individual vehicle subsystem (paint, interior, etc.), “looking for imperfections so slight even the untrained eye, or ear, could not detect them”

1,000,000 – test miles logged on the new 3.5L EcoBoost V6 prototypes before landing under the hood of the 2010 Lincoln MKS