Story time.
Not sure how much of this I've shared previously, so there might be some repeating in here.
Bought a 2018 Ford Focus 6 years ago. Why? Because I needed a car to get from A to B that I can hand down to the twins when they turn 16, which is around the corner. Plus, I got it for nothing. It was part of a shipment going to a convent (I'm not making this up) that the nuns cancelled plus I have family in the industry and being a vet, well, at less than $15K I couldn't say no. I mean, it was brand new. It had 7 miles on it.
Cut to a few years later and we're driving back and forth to Cleveland every weekend. My oldest is in a play out there, but this is before she could drive. One weekend, while my wife was driving the car to Cleveland, it broke down. The engine was completely seized. In a move that indicated something was definitely wrong, Ford shipped a brand new engine to replace it and we paid $0 for the incident.
About 1 year ago, I was driving it and out of nowhere it just lost all acceleration. I couldn't get past 55 MPH and it took all day to get up to speed. Turns out, the turbo had gone bad. $400 or so part and repair.
On a Thursday two weeks ago, I left the new office and was traveling side streets on the way home. I was in a roundabout and heard something in my car. All acceleration gone. It seemed like the transmission was fucked up to as trying to get going would result in almost redlining the engine. I pulled into an oil change place hoping it was the transmission fluid. They oddly told me that my oil was overfilled. That didn't make sense. The place I usually go was always spot on and it's been 5K miles.
Anyway, that visit didn't fix shit, so I swung by my folks as they were on the way home. I visited for a bit hoping whatever was going on would temporarily resolve itself. (That worked previously with the turbo issue, but it was a temp fix.) Nope. Heading home and about 5 minutes away it died at a red light. Conveniently, there was an empty field right there where a house used to be, so I threw it into neutral and quickly shoved it in. It was honestly very fortuitous. The driveway was 15 ft away from where I broke down.
It was towed to a mechanic in the area we use. They checked the turbo. It was fine. However, they found metal pieces in the oil. Uh oh. The engine was completely seized again. The exact same issue from where it broke down in Cleveland. It was then towed to the dealership because there is an active recall and this seems like it's under it. Plus, the warranty on this engine expired in a month.
The dealership said they'd need to charge me $700 to tear the engine apart to confirm the issue is part of the recall. They did and it is, thus that charge is wiped off my bill. There will be no charges.
Here's where it gets fun. The car is a paperweight. There's a temp fix that can get it running, but all the parts are on backorder and the dealership has no ETA on when they'll get new ones.
And did you catch that important part? It's a
temp fix.
Turns out, Ford has no permanent fix yet. So even when and if they get my car working again, the recall will still be active on it. It probably will break down again if it doesn't develop that permanent fix sooner rather than later.
6 years old and it needs a THIRD engine.
I'm looking into lemon laws because this would seem to apply since they cannot fix the issue. Catt, you're the finance man, explain why this wouldn't make sense for Ford:
Ford scraps the car and the entire line. Anyone with it can get the original purchase price of the car towards a new Ford vehicle. (Or used to make it economically viable for everyone, but they can't get a car for less value and expect money back. This is an equal or more swap.) Now Ford can sell a bunch of cars, stop trying to develop a fix for a bad design, stop shipping out entire engines and temp fix parts, get whatever value is left of the vehicles, overall stop losing money on this model, and turn lemons into lemonade for a bunch of customers who are probably thinking, "I'm not buying a Ford ever again."
I should write them and say, "Give me this deal and I'll even sign an NDA for an extra $5K towards my new car."
