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The Ford-Firestone Blowout

By Rob WalkerPosted Wednesday, May 23, 2001, at 11:30 PM ET

There are corporate squabbles, and then there are corporate squabbles. It's one thing for two firms competing for the same consumers to take potshots at one another. Or for rival suitors in a takeover battle to exchange public digs. But the meltdown of the relationship between longtime allies Ford and Firestone (a wholly owned subsidiary of Bridgestone) is truly astonishing.

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"We simply do not have enough confidence in the future performance of these tires' keeping our customers safe," Ford CEO Jacques Nasser told the media yesterday. John Lampe, CEO of Firestone, countered, "The real issue here is the safety of the Explorer." Ford has announced it will replace 13 million Firestone tires on its Explorers. Firestone says the "erosion" of mutual respect and trust between the firms has pushed the company into "ending its tire supply relationship" with Ford (although it's worth noting that all hard feelings will be set aside in the European and Asian markets, where Ford will continue to buy Firestone tires).

Each man backs up his accusations with talk of internal analysis that finds blame in the other's product for last year's rash of Explorer crashes, which are reported to have resulted in more than 100 deaths in the United States. The rhetoric has now reached a point where both cannot be right. And in fact, it's on the verge of leading to a situation in which it's hard not to wonder whether somebody is lying, either directly or by way of misleading analysis.

In the breakup letter that Lampe handed over to a Ford executive on Monday, he writes: "Our analysis suggests that there are significant safety issues with a substantial segment of Ford Explorers. We have made your staff aware of our concerns. They have steadfastly refused to acknowledge those issues."

Now, there's basically no way out of this. Either it's true, and Ford is behaving with an outrageous disregard for consumer safety; or it's false, and Firestone is the one being inexcusably irresponsible. Is there a plausible explanation that can allow both of these companies to walk away from this imbroglio without a shattered reputation?

As the current round of press coverage has noted, plaintiffs' lawyers have no complaint about this turn of events, since each firm's accusations can now be added to legal ammunition unleashed on the other. This does not bode well for either company. Turning the tire disaster into a public blame game is unlikely to produce a clear winner—but there is an excellent chance of it producing two losers.

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COMMENTS

Reader Comments From The Fray:

[Notes from the Fray Editor: Will Allen's post, below, sailed through the Fray irony test, but, just in case, he explains the point here.]

I think it is possible that both Ford and Firestone are right. Ford says that Explorers with non Firestone tires are as safe as other cars, and Firestone says that its tires on other vehicles are also safe. This suggests a couple of possibilities:
1) there is something about the interaction of Explorers and Firestone tires that causes fatalities
or 2) we should look more closely at the particular time frame in which the most problematic Firestone tires seem to have been made, a time in which many of the tires were made by replacement workers who were not as well trained as the one who were on strike.

--Susan Helper

(To reply, click here.)

I was late getting home from the saloon after downing several martinis, so I drove 20 m.p.h. over the speed limit while dialing my cell phone, trying to call my bookie to explain why he should let me go double for nothing on The Belmont, since I was sure to have my luck change after what happened to me with The Preakness and The Derby, when I realized I was hungry and remembered that I had a ham sandwich in the glove box, so I reached over to get it out while cradling the cell phone in my hand, while screaming obscenities at my tight-ass bookie, when I saw this hot babe in a BMW who smiled at me, so I tried to make eye contact, which distracted me a little, causing me to swerve over the center line, which caused me to jerk the wheel back, and reflexively apply the brakes as I took a bite out of the sandwich, and as I looked into the rear view mirror to see if some moron might rear-end me, I saw that my hair was a bit mussed up, which made me worry that the babe in the BMW might not think of me as a prospect, so I reached for my comb on the floor of the car, and when I did so I saw the headline in my old newspaper saying that Firestone Tires or Ford Explorers might have caused 100 deaths, out of several million vehicles sold, and I thought to myself, "How dare those bastards risk the lives of the public!!"

--Will Allen

(To reply, click here.)

(5/25)

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