Ford Issues Do-Not-Drive Advisory For Over 700K Vehicles

Faulty airbags manufactured by Takata have been a thorn in the sides of safety regulators, automakers, and consumers for years now, as those units were installed in millions of vehicles made by multiple manufacturers for a long time. Even today, years after the largest recall in automotive history was issued over the particular problem, there are still a lot of vehicles driving around with faulty airbags that can rupture and lead to injuries or worse – death. Now, Ford has issued a do-not-drive advisory for many of those impacted models.

This do-not-drive advisory is being issued for owners of select vehicles that have not yet had those models repaired under the past three safety recalls pertaining to Takata airbags – 15S21, 17S42, and 19S01. The concept here is to motivate those owners to get their vehicles repaired immediately, as the older those models get, it becomes increasingly possible that parts inside the airbags will explode and send sharp metal fragments flying in the event of a crash, potentially causing serious injuries or death for the driver and passengers.

This latest do-not-drive advisory pertains to 765,600 Ford and Lincoln vehicles, with 374,300 of those models residing in the U.S. – the 2004-2006 Ford Ranger, 2005-2014 Ford Mustang, 2005-2006 Ford GT, 2006-2012 Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, Lincoln MKZ, and Lincoln Zephyr, 2007-2010 Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX, and 2007-2011 Ford Ranger. Owners can head over here to see if their specific vehicle is impacted by this particular issue.

Ford continues to work to contact those customers – to the tune of 121 million attempts in the U.S. thus far alone – sending letters, emails, calling them on the phone, and visiting more than one million customer homes as well, which has at least solved this particular problem in 95 percent of impacted models. The parts needed to repair these vehicles are available now, and repairs can be completed either at the dealership or via mobile service, though the latter option requires dealers to tow those vehicles to the dealership for repair.

We’ll have more on this soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for more Ford recall news and continuous Ford news coverage.