The Ford Explorer is a popular choice for today’s drivers, with the Blue Oval selling 222,706 cars last year – making it the best-selling three-row SUV in the country for 2025. However, go back 25 years, and the company was probably wondering if the Explorer had a future. That’s because the brand’s large SUV was caught up in a massive recall of Firestone tires in 2000. The Explorer was not recalled as part of the issue, but the automaker spent billions of dollars trying to make things right, and it also cost Ford dearly in terms of consumer confidence. Meanwhile, the broken trust between Ford and Firestone meant the end of nearly a century of collaboration between the companies’ respective founders.
Henry Ford’s Model T ran on Harvey Firestone’s pneumatic tires as early as 1905, and the two entrepreneurs also became close friends. For example, with Thomas Edison and John Burroughs – the latter of whom was a famous naturalist of the time – the “Four Vagabonds” took long-distance road trips together in the late 1910s/early 1920s. Ford would continue to use Firestone as a regular tire supplier until the recall crisis – although not an exclusive supplier.
And frankly, it was a crisis. We sometimes poke fun at Ford’s current round of recalls, ranging from unexpected downshifts for the F-150 to malfunctioning backup cameras for the Edge and Bronco. However, the situation at Firestone was no joke, as at least 174 people died while more than 700 were injured.
What was the problem with the Explorer’s Firestone tires?
As described in a engineering analysis report From NHTSA, the exact problem was “belt-leaving-belt tread separation”. This means that the outer belt of the tire completely slips away from the inner belt and takes the tire tire with it. Needless to say, this is not good, especially at highway speeds.
The analysis report revealed that the belts in the defective Firestone Focus tires were manufactured with some significant adhesion issues where the inner and outer layers came together. Material design flaws cited in the study include not providing thick enough rubber in the space between the two belts (inter-belt gauge). It was a similar story with the belt-wedge rubber, which compresses cracks on the sides of the tyres. Turning to the shoulder pockets of the tires – the areas where the tread and wall come together – the report says a ring of weak spots has formed on the affected Firestone rubber that extends around the tires.
Nor was that the end of the list. It turns out that Firestone had received warnings about many of these problems months before it was forced to recall the tires. The documents show that Firestone and Ford knew about tire problems since 1997, and that Firestone placed some of the blame on drivers of both the automaker and the Explorer. Firestone claimed that some Explorer drivers did not keep their tires properly inflated and attributed this to “vehicle load levels and low standard tire pressure.” CNN report.
How much was Ford to blame for the Firestone failure?
As mentioned, Ford never had to recall the Explorer vehicle in connection with the Firestone failure. It also does not appear that the company was ever found liable in any court. Sure, Ford faced a lot of lawsuits, but it took a highly proactive approach to settling them.
It’s quite clear that Ford bears some responsibility here. For example, there is evidence from the beginning that Ford knew the Explorer’s front suspension was a questionable proposition. The same basic twin I-beam setup had already been used in the Bronco II, which led to hundreds of lawsuits over that vehicle’s tendency to roll over. Additionally, when the Explorer’s front suspension was changed in 1995, the modifications further raised the vehicle’s center of gravity.
Ford made the final decision on what tires would be installed on the Explorer, and it did not always prioritize safety. Consider: Ford executives knew it was important to get good reviews from Consumers Union (the predecessor to Consumer Reports), so they pre-tested the Explorer with two different tire sizes. The smaller rubber was judged to be most likely to pass CU criteria, but Ford chose the larger rubber. The Ford-Firestone tire recall ultimately ranked among the ten largest automotive scandals that led to an executive’s resignation.
