http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12529-1677058,00.html

This isn't helping ford at all...

jeremy clarkson is better off with the ferrari f430.

Wow, what an interesting article. The fact that Ford took responsibity and gave him his money back was huge... many manufactures would have laughed that off and keep trying to fix it.

Great article. :thumbup: to Ford for doing the right thing and taking responsibility for their work

Wow, what an interesting article. The fact that Ford took responsibity and gave him his money back was huge... many manufactures would have laughed that off and keep trying to fix it.


Thats true, but NOT when your Jeremy Clarkson.

Ford did the right thing with refunding his money back without a big hastle but it is shocking that they have released such a poorly executed and designed vehicle especially at such a high asking price. Ford may have built a very good looking high performance car but so do many manufacturers and the GT is just another supercar that will fall into the category of having horrible reilability, major design flaws, should only be driven a little bit on the weekends in perfect conditions, will cost a fortune to fix all the frequent problems that are going to occur with this vehicle, have a very high asking price, etc. With as long as we have been making cars with piston engines and all we know there is no excuse for a modern car no matter what its performance to have as many issues and be as unreliable as the Ford GT as well as other high dollar cars. It is usaully always the cars with the highest price tags are the cars that are the most unreliable and most expensive to fix while Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys can go for 300,000 miles with little if any problems. If I spend alot of money on a car the first thing I want is for it to be reliable and trouble free.

One of the reasons I have alot of respect for the Acura NSX other then it is one of the best looking cars I have seen is that it is extremely reliable, able to be driven every day, does not cost a fortune to own yet it has the supercar looks, mid engine design, very high performance/handling while costing less then most supercars. There are cars that have more horsepower and more features but few that are the overall package and anywhere near as reliable as the NSX. After reading that article and others on the Ford GT I would take an NSX over it any day even if the NSX is not as fast or putting out as much horsepower.

sure it is nice of Ford to give him his $ back but considering the reputation of the man, they better do anything to please him. On the other hand, how stupid was it not to send somebody from US to actually fix his car. It would be so much cheaper for everybody to do that...its not like it was plagued with real serious problems :uh:

LMAO, only an American company would have that many problems with a super-car....sad really when you think about it.... :cry: ...poor American's can't compete in the real world anymore. The Japanese are killing them in sales. The Europeans are smashing them around in luxury and performance. The Italians are having their way with them on prestige and speed and exotic-ness. Sad….

- Nizhu

Interesting article.....

another black eye for the blue oval... if they all do that, then they SERIOUSLY have a problem... :thumbdn:


You'd think that with a car that expensive and that high profile, that they would make sure EVERYTHING on the car worked to perfection.

Well, from what I' ve heard, many exotic cars aren't that reliable . . .

"I didn’t even mind when it arrived at my house one month ago inside a truck which had “On Time” written down the side. As we know from America’s arrival into the second world war, their concept of “on time” differs slightly from ours."

Any of you guys have as much of a problem with this BS statement as I do? Since the USA saved the english from ending up a germany speaking country, this guy is a big *******. Plus not that big of a problem with the GT, it is a first year production, going to be some problems and this seems to be with the same unit, I bet it is made in ENGLAND. Can you believe a englishman complaining about automotive build quality? :confused:

"I didn’t even mind when it arrived at my house one month ago inside a truck which had “On Time” written down the side. As we know from America’s arrival into the second world war, their concept of “on time” differs slightly from ours."

Any of you guys have as much of a problem with this BS statement as I do? Since the USA saved the english from ending up a germany speaking country, this guy is a big *******. Plus not that big of a problem with the GT, it is a first year production, going to be some problems and this seems to be with the same unit, I bet it is made in ENGLAND. Can you believe a englishman complaining about automotive build quality? :confused:

No, I don't have a problem, it's a hunk of crap like most ford cars.

What does a war have to do with a GT40?

I'll take the bet that in 4 years the build quality still sucks.

I can believe THIS englishman is, since he has touched everything that starts and moves.

LMAO, only an American company would have that many problems with a super-car....sad really when you think about it.... :cry: ...poor American's can't compete in the real world anymore. The Japanese are killing them in sales. The Europeans are smashing them around in luxury and performance. The Italians are having their way with them on prestige and speed and exotic-ness. Sad….

- Nizhu


ford will never been on par with ferrari, bmw, mercedes, lexus etc....they're an american company, and their employees are protected by unions...which means its hard to fire a crappy employee since you have to fight the union! just wait for the supra from planet kaizen....

didn't he say that it came with an aftermarket alarm?

I wouldn't fault FORD for that... the check engine light on the other hand...

very nice read :thumbup: . it is an absolute disgrace that America's finest production car, which won over the lead journalist of a, quite frankly, "american hating" publication/ tv production, must suffer a downfall due to tiny mechanical issues. seriously a pitiful shame :sad:

ford will never been on par with ferrari, bmw, mercedes, lexus etc....they're an american company, and their employees are protected by unions...which means its hard to fire a crappy employee since you have to fight the union! just wait for the supra from planet kaizen....

bro, buy me a LF-A :thumbup:

- Nizhu

Man that's too bad. I cannot beleive the first automobile makers are slowly fading away. The only manufacture still pumping is Mercedes. Around 1880 ish Benz made his first vehice, but they didn't made a plant until later on after Ford started.

I expected this car to have problems. I don't think ford has put out anything without some form of problems for a while now.

If it was an aftermaket alarm then they should jsut have removed it :rolleyes:

Dont worry, in a few years, it will have more plastic to save money, the Good ole ford way of doing business.

No, I don't have a problem, it's a hunk of crap like most ford cars.

What does a war have to do with a GT40?

I'll take the bet that in 4 years the build quality still sucks.

I can believe THIS englishman is, since he has touched everything that starts and moves.

Maybe I can help you understand. He was stating that the GT40 got to him later than it was suppose to arrive. But Ford (Americans) thought that was OK, meaning close enough. Then he implied that the USA got into World War II late and we also thought that was good enough. He was putting down the USA, saying we "Americans" are always late and don't meet our commitments. Coming from an Englishman and England, where they have never been noted for building anything automotive that was dependable, I thought was way out of line. I can see that this journalist hates America and would never put any faith in what he writes about an American vehicle. Hope that helps.

Maybe I can help you understand. He was stating that the GT40 got to him later than it was suppose to arrive. But Ford (Americans) thought that was OK, meaning close enough. Then he implied that the USA got into World War II late and we also thought that was good enough. He was putting down the USA, saying we "Americans" are always late and don't meet our commitments. Coming from an Englishman and England, where they have never been noted for building anything automotive that was dependable, I thought was way out of line. I can see that this journalist hates America and would never put any faith in what he writes about an American vehicle. Hope that helps.

Interesting that his ultimate Dream Car would be an American make is it not then?

Also with regards to WWII, America was staying neutral after having learned it's lesson of the expense of warfare in WWI. America would have never joined the war had the bombing of Pearl Harbor not occurred. Sure America was supplying Allied troops beforehand, but they were not actively sending soldiers out to fight the Axis powers. Talk about the biggest mistake in Japanese History.

How hard is it to fix that alarm problem?
Sounds like a pretty easy fix to me.

How hard is it to fix that alarm problem?
Sounds like a pretty easy fix to me.

Depends on how deep its wired. By my guess, to protect a car like that, its wired pretty heavily. Thats including going to the ECM, TCM, Fuel Pump, Doors, blah blah blah. Also, he said that the person calling him could turn the car off remotley, thats a good indication that its intergrated into just about every wire in that car.

i really had faith in Ford to do this right.

i mean they REPEATEDLY delayed the car's delivery...AND upped the price about 30K pounds--and what does he get?

a ford focus wagon (the loaner while his was in the shop)--and

"sir, your car has been stolen" OVER AND OVER AGAIN

he actually showed his cellular phone to the guests that are allowed on the show--he had 5 text messages from the company from That morning alone. his car was stolen 5 times on the way to work...while he was IN the car.



i don't remember if he sold his SL55 AMG...

hell the voice recognition didn't work right..the SATNAV Was stupid...but at least it didn't "get stolen" 5 times on the way to work..

Dictionary of -Ford- :

F-ound
O-n
R-oadside
D-aily

:spam:

lol, there are too many of those.

Fixed
Or
Repaired
Daily

F***ing
Only
Rolls
Downhill

Factory
Ordered
Road
Disaster

Foolish
Owner
Regrets
Decision

F***ed (or Fixed)
On
Race
Day

And my Favorite:

Failure
Of
Research &
Development

Ford has said I can buy the car back any time. It has even lent me an Aston Martin DB9 while I make up my mind. I don’t know though. I just don’t know.

Now that is truely funny. The guy I bought my SC off of three years ago made Aston Martin refund the purchase price of his DB9 after several attempts to fix the voice recognition/driver ID/security system. It never worked correctly. So he got a refund and purchased that AMG SL55 or whatever braumeister high dollar saloon that thing is.

Eh, it's just money.

ford will never been on par with ferrari, bmw, mercedes, lexus etc....they're an american company, and their employees are protected by unions...which means its hard to fire a crappy employee since you have to fight the union! just wait for the supra from planet kaizen....

And what about the EU?

maybe it's just an opinion...

but i think europeans have had a stricter work ethic than americans have.. yeah we've "accomplished" more in a sense..

but we just do the supesizing...it's the europeans and japanese who perfect the details and make something worth the money.

two exceptions.

the iPod.
and my logitech stuff.

Of course it's an opinion. It's interesting though. Do Americans have a worse work ethic than say the French? Obviously, France is not representative of the rest of the Union. I'm impressed with the German outlook. But it is interesting that Euro workforces get a whole lot more vacation in a year and practice a scaled down work week in some arena's or when it is possible. Thing is, people are the same everywhere. The issue is car quality. That is not the States strong point. But the USA manufactures many more great products as well in quantity larger than 2.

maybe it's just an opinion...

but i think europeans have had a stricter work ethic than americans have.. yeah we've "accomplished" more in a sense..

but we just do the supesizing...it's the europeans and japanese who perfect the details and make something worth the money.

two exceptions.

the iPod.
and my logitech stuff.

You've never been to europe have you? The reason we are the only superpower in the world is because of the American people. With the PC way we have been raising this last generation we might have problems in the future.

If I paid that much for a car, I would expect it to be perfect with no exceptions. The mentality of putting a huge motor in a car and banking on that alone to make up for the shortcoming isn't going to cut it. Not to sound closed minded, but as an example, any Vette before the C5 was always perceived as poor quality and a rattle box. It took them how many years, 35+ to give it partly right?

Most americans want the rumble, and the shiny new junk and don't really care about quality.

If I paid that much for a car, I would expect it to be perfect with no exceptions. The mentality of putting a huge motor in a car and banking on that alone to make up for the shortcoming isn't going to cut it. Not to sound closed minded, but as an example, any Vette before the C5 was always perceived as poor quality and a rattle box. It took them how many years, 35+ to give it partly right?

Most americans want the rumble, and the shiny new junk and don't really care about quality.

Vehicles not noted for their dependablity
Range Rover
RR
Ferrari
Aston Martin
Lamborghini
MG's

These are all european vehicles bought sold world wide and most are very very expensive. I don't think Americans have any less bias toward quality then any other people. What do you base your statement on? Todd it seems that most very expensive high performance vehicles are not as dependable as the more common mundane brands, why would anyone expect a exotic GT40 to be as dependable as a Toyota? The only exotic that I ever owned that was that dependable and cheap to maintain was my 1991 Acura NSX.