Report: Ford Sent Wrong Tires Overseas

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--The Associated Press is reporting that Ford Motor Co. internal documents reveal that the wrong type of Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. tires were shipped to the Persian Gulf affixed to thousands of Explorers and Mountaineers. Firestone had not approved using these types of tires, according to Ford documents given to Congress.

The AP said at least seven people in the Gulf region died in rollover crashes involving the sport utility vehicles equipped with Firestone’s 16-inch Wilderness AT tires, “made for use on North American roads, before Ford quietly began replacing them last year with Goodyear tires.”

According to the AP, Firestone would not assist in paying for the $4.3 million cost, claiming the tire was made properly--but not designed for the hot climate, fast drivers, and heavy off-road use in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperative Council countries. Ford conceded this was the case, according to one of the memos provided to congressional investigators.

According to the AP, Lisa Klein, Ford’s executive director for purchasing, said in an Oct. 1, 1999 memo to Carlos Mazzorin, Ford’s group vice president for global purchasing, that “Firestone’s position that the tire meets all quoted functional specifications, and that it was not meant for the GCC market application, is confirmed by our research.” She added that “It appears that Ford chose to use the North American specified tire in the GCC market, and Firestone was not part of that decision.”

(The GCC is a loose political and economic alliance grouping Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.)

According to the AP, Klein’s memo was a follow-up to an August note, in which she observed that the P255/70R16 tire had only an “S” speed rating, which allows for speeds up to 112 mph, yet it should have had at least a tougher “T” rating because the Gulf region has “excellent highway areas without speed zones.”

The AP said she also reported that the tire should have been made of a rubber compound more suitable for a light truck tread than for a car--so the tire would be more puncture-resistant--and should have had reduced skid, to run cooler and wear out faster because “time and temperature are attributes of degradation.” The temperature in the region tops 115 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer.

The tires on SUVs sent to the Gulf region are not among the 6.5 million 15-inch tires recalled in August by Firestone in the United States. Firestone tires have been linked to at least 147 deaths in Venezuela and the U.S., and have been blamed for crashes in several other countries with warm climates.

The 16-inch tires were on 6,755 Ford SUVs sent to the Gulf countries from 1996 until August 1999, despite complaints of tread separations dating back two years, according to the AP.

In a letter dated October 24, 1998, to John Thompson at Firestone’s Saudi Arabian dealer, Tamimi Co.--Ford dealer Paul Wright said he first notified Thompson of his concerns in mid-1997.

“Do we have to have a fatality before any action is taken on this subject?” Wright asked, according to the AP’s dispatch.

According to the AP, on June 23, 1999, a service manager of the Arabian Car Marketing Co., a Ford dealership in Oman, faxed a letter to several Ford executives about a crash that killed a driver and three children, and caused the driver’s pregnant wife to miscarry.

Two months later, Ford began replacing the Firestone tires with Goodyear Wranglers, but did so as a “customer satisfaction” program without advertising it as a recall. The company did not notify U.S. officials.

In September, the Saudi Arabian Standards Organization issued a notice banning the import of all vehicles, both new and used, equipped with Firestone tires.