It's not like I buy a car often these days (or heck, even that I'm in the market for a car right now)... but, last time I did, I was able to buy new, and took the time to compare the offerings of the various "mainstream" auto manufacturers. Sure, the type of car, miles per gallon, aesthetics, price and the like are all important factors, but one of the big ones (that doesn't have an easy gauge on any spec sheet or manufacturer website) is quality of build. You pretty much have to weigh the history of the company's products over a substantial time frame, with more weight given to more recent products. For much of my life, Ford has had... well, at least an image problem. Whether it's the old crack about Ford standing for "found on roadside dead", or the unfortunate design issue of the Pinto (which, for those of you not old enough to remember, made rear-end collisions a potentially explosive situation), or anecdotes from friends and acquaintances about, for example, axles breaking on newly bought trucks, Ford has long had a bit of dodginess about it. Heck, they even tried to counteract that perception, some years back, with their "at Ford, quality is Job 1" slogan. Long story short, all else being equal, I would have probably required a significant price difference in the Ford's favor to buy it over another manufacturer's vehicle, but it would still have been a possibility, up to today.
What changed today, you might ask? Well, the Detroit Free Press put out an investigative article detailing how Ford knowingly put vehicles with flawed transmissions out on the market, and did their best to cover up that it was a known-flawed design after the fact. There really couldn't be a more glaring red line never to be crossed by any manufacturer of any product (and yes, I include the software industry in that, for all it seems like almost common practice there). That's a betrayal of trust that should have significant legal consequences... whether it does or not, I'm quite certain I will never buy a Ford from here out, or sign off on one being bought by any company I work for, simply because I can't envision how Ford can ever convince me that they've fixed the culture that caused this problem to arise. It's bad enough that I'm going to have significant qualms about even considering the products of any other manufacturer that's partnering with Ford in any way, for fear their ethos of "it doesn't matter if it works right, ship it" might have somehow infected their partner.
So, yeah, it's a little sad (Ford being all but synonymous with "American auto manufacturing history"), but Ford's dead to me, barring some amazing, unforeseeable, substantiated turnaround hereafter.
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