[Mr 5 0]

Not certain why this year-old thread was revived but the issue remains a salient one.

I've owned many different brands of automobiles; from GM to Mazda to Chrysler to Ford to Honda. My 1990 Mustang is a fine automobile that has given me almost zero problems in 125,000 one-owner (me) miles. I did not make any modifications to it until the warrranty was over. O.K., I did add a K&N air filter, which was easily switchable back to a paper filter if it had to go to the dealer for warranty work, which never happened. I also advanced the stock timing (set at 7 degrees advanced from the factory...10 was stock...I went to 14) but again, this tiny 'mod' was easily changed back to stock and if I didn't, I could claim ignorance and get away with it. I mention all this only to lay out my experience with warranty issues as they pertain to Ford and I never had any. I am only commenting on other people's experience, which seems rather poor, to say the least.

This kind of dealer/manufacturer attitude regarding warranty work is certainly not new or limited to Ford but I think it may be somewhat less intense on the Japanese cars. After all, any warranty work is a dead loss all around. The dealer loses the tech's time for a warranty job on which he gets less than his normal labor rate so he loses money and the factory is paying for parts and labor that they get zero for, making the work a dead loss for them. Yes, admittedly it's a built-in cost of doing business for any auto manufacturer but this expense has to be a carefully controlled or it can easily get out of hand.

With this reality in mind, it's easy to see why Ford is eager to find any reason to void an owner's warranty but as I stated in my comments almost a year ago, this is short-sighted and will hurt them in the long run if it extends to the average van, SUV and sedan customer and is not simply confined to Mustang owners, which I doubt. The easy explanation is to simply manufacture a well-made automobile that needs little to no warranty work, as Honda and Toyota do. Ford seems unable or unwilling to do that and depend on name recognition, loyalty and emotional responses to sell their vehicles. Few Japanese manufacturers do that and Japanese vehicle quality, which is not perfect, granted, has generally become a built-in selling point that Ford, GM and especially Chrysler never really had to begin with. Especially Chrysler.

The conclusion seems to be that Ford has lousy warranty coverage and like most manufacturers, avoids doing warranty work whenever possible. I call it: "They all do that" syndrome. That's when the Service Writer tells the customer who complains about some noise or relatively minor malfunction that "They all do that", which is simply saying that the manufacturer makes and that dealer sold you a new car with built-in, insoluble mechanical problems, which is ridiculously short-sighted but has been common for many years. This attitude is magnified with V-8 Mustangs, a performance car that most service writers 'know' is bought for speed and has 'probably' been modified. So, they quibble and stonewall and look for modifications that they can use to screw you out of a deserved warranty repair on a malfunctioning part in the vehicle they sold you. Thus it is and ever was. Caveat Emptor.

The only solution is to buy a low-performance but very reliable Japanese car, a used car with no warranty to worry about or to buy new, leave the car stock for 36,000 miles and then modify it to your hearts content. Whatever you do, don't expect any Ford dealer to gladly perform warranty repairs on a V-8 Mustang without checking for modifications and don't expect any vehicle to never need such repairs before the warranty is over by either mileage or time. Some won't. My '90 never did and never has. That was then and this is now. I know from what my buddy told me - he owns and runs a huge auto repair facility - that European cars are the absolute worst for reliability, especially BMW's, Audi's and Land Rovers and that dealers of these high-end cars (some costing as much as $70,000.) give the owners a very hard time about those often very expensive (to the dealer/manufacturer) warranty repairs. It's just a fact of life. It also stinks. So: One mo' time: Caveat Emptor.