Ford achieves quality milestone, as CEO targets flawless new vehicle launches

DETROIT — Ford Motor regularly promotes itself as a cornerstone of American manufacturing, business and truck leadership with its best-selling F-Series pickups, but it also has led the U.S. in one area that it isn't so proud of: vehicle recalls and quality issues.

They've plagued the Detroit automaker's earnings, degraded customer trust and stained Ford's reputation for much of the past decade. The automaker has issued 53 recalls for more than 12 million vehicles so far this year after an industry record of 153 recalls covering 13 million cars and trucks in 2025.

But that period for Ford is coming to an end, CEO Jim Farley told CNBC during an exclusive interview, as the automaker notched a key quality milestone. He said Ford has learned from its past mistakes and will use that knowledge to attempt to flawlessly launch a litany of new products in the coming years.

"Our best days are in front of us as we continue to execute this quality turnaround for our investors, for employees, for our customers," Farley said during a phone interview. "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."

Doing so will be a difficult task. New vehicle launches, especially ones with emerging technologies such as software-defined systems and electrified powertrains, are complex, and one issue can have a ripple effect on an entire product line.

It's something Farley knows all too well. Such issues have cost Ford billions of dollars in losses under his nearly six-year tenure leading the company.

The automaker this week added to its 2026 recall total by recalling 741,195 SUVs and F-150 pickup trucks that varied in age from the 2018 to 2021 model years.

Investors have been closely watching the issues, saying unneeded warranty costs are a risk to the company's guidance and future business plans. Warranty costs are the expenses an automaker incurs to cover repairs, replacements and other costs for defective parts or workmanship under a certain period of time or miles driven after customers purchase a new vehicle.

Ford said it reduced warranty and materials costs by $1.5 billion in 2025, when adjusted for volume and mix, and is targeting an additional reduction in warranty and material costs in 2026. This follows the company's warranty costs reaching a high of $4.8 billion in 2023.

"While warranty costs had been a clear drag to earnings over the past several years, Ford appears to have 'turned the corner,'" Barclays analyst Dan Levy said in a May 15 investor note, citing four consecutive quarters of year-over-year warranty benefits. "We believe the 1Q warranty improvement is encouraging, yet believe further improvement will still be needed."

The company last week received outside validation of its yearslong efforts to turn around its product issues as the Ford brand was named the top mass-market brand in the U.S. in J.D. Power's initial quality ranking.

After the news was released on June 25, Ford stock rose 2%, making it the company's second-best trading day of the month.