Ford has led the United States in vehicle recalls for much of the past decade. Now the company says it has turned a corner.
According to CNBC, the Ford brand was named the top mass-market brand in the U.S. in J.D. Power's initial quality study last week. CEO Jim Farley called it outside validation of the company's yearslong effort to fix its product problems. The recognition comes after Ford issued an industry record 153 recalls covering 13 million cars and trucks in 2025.
So far in 2026, Ford has issued 53 recalls covering more than 12 million vehicles. That total grew this week when the company recalled 741,195 SUVs and F-150 pickup trucks from the 2018 to 2021 model years.
Even so, Farley told CNBC in an exclusive interview that the worst is behind the company. "Our best days are in front of us as we continue to execute this quality turnaround for our investors, for employees, for our customers," he said. "We're going to have all new vehicles across our entire North America range in a couple of years, and so that whole new lineup, we have to launch all those perfectly."
That will not be a simple task. New vehicle launches involving software-defined systems and electrified powertrains are technically complex. A single flaw can ripple across an entire product line. Farley has led Ford for nearly six years, and quality problems have cost the company billions of dollars during that time.
The financial damage was clearest in 2023, when Ford's warranty costs reached a high of $4.8 billion. Warranty costs are the expenses an automaker pays to cover repairs, replacements, and other fixes for defective parts or workmanship during the period covered after a customer buys a new vehicle. Ford said it reduced warranty and materials costs by $1.5 billion in 2025, adjusted for volume and mix, and is targeting additional reductions in 2026.
Investors have followed the numbers closely. Analysts have flagged unneeded warranty costs as a risk to Ford's guidance and future business plans. Barclays analyst Dan Levy addressed the trend in a May 15 investor note. "While warranty costs had been a clear drag to earnings over the past several years, Ford appears to have 'turned the corner,'" Levy wrote, citing four consecutive quarters of year-over-year warranty benefits. He added: "We believe the 1Q warranty improvement is encouraging, yet believe further improvement will still be needed."
Ford promotes itself as a cornerstone of American manufacturing and truck leadership, built largely on the strength of its best-selling F-Series pickups. Recall problems and quality issues have complicated that image for years, degrading customer trust and weighing on earnings. The J.D. Power ranking offers the company a concrete external measure to point to as it prepares for a major product refresh across its North American lineup.
Farley has framed the coming vehicle launches as the defining test of whether Ford's quality improvements can hold. The pressure is significant. A full lineup replacement, executed over a short window, leaves little margin for the kind of problems that have defined the past several years. Whether the automaker can meet that standard will become clearer as new models reach customers in the years ahead.
