Ford Motor Company has issued more recalls in the past two years than some automakers manage in a decade — and 2025 wasn’t an anomaly. It was a record.
The Dearborn, Michigan automaker set an all-time industry benchmark in 2025 with 153 recalls affecting 12.9 million vehicles, nearly doubling General Motors’ previous record of 77 recalls in 2014 — the year GM was consumed by the ignition-switch scandal that killed more than 100 people. Ford’s record, by contrast, is largely self-inflicted: a deliberate, aggressive strategy of finding problems before they find customers. Whether that’s reassuring or alarming depends on where you’re sitting.
Across six model years — 2020 through 2026 — Ford has issued recalls touching nearly every vehicle in its lineup, spanning 16 models across SUVs, crossovers, trucks, performance cars, and commercial vans. The scope is staggering. And 2026, still barely two months old, is already on pace to match or exceed that pace. In the first 61 days of the year alone, Ford recalled 7.3 million vehicles — roughly 56 to 75 percent of the entire industry’s recall volume during that stretch, according to federal data. The rest of the auto industry combined recalled fewer than 3 million.
A Strategy, Not a Crisis — Ford Says
Ford has been direct about what’s driving the numbers. “The increase in recalls reflects our intensive strategy to quickly find and fix hardware and software issues and go the extra mile to help protect customers,” the company stated in summer 2025, adding that it “has more than doubled its team of safety and technical experts in the past two years and significantly increased testing to failure on critical systems in current Ford vehicles such as powertrains, steering and braking. Insights from this testing are being incorporated into current production.”
That’s a notable framing. Ford isn’t apologizing — it’s positioning the recalls as evidence of diligence rather than dysfunction. And there’s something to that. Of the 153 recalls issued in 2025, 42 — roughly 27 percent — were issued specifically because prior repairs had been performed incorrectly. Ford went back and fixed its own fixes. That’s either a sign of an unusually conscientious safety culture or a worrying indicator of systemic quality-control problems. Possibly both.
Still, the raw numbers are hard to contextualize charitably. In 2025, Toyota and Lexus combined recalled approximately 3.2 million vehicles. Stellantis recalled around 2.8 million. Ford recalled more than four times either competitor. Between 2021 and 2024, Ford had averaged roughly 50 to 70 recalls annually — already an elevated pace. Then 2025 arrived and blew the ceiling off.
SUVs and Crossovers: Cameras, Latches, and Fire Risk
If one category has borne the brunt of Ford’s recall wave, it’s SUVs and crossovers. All seven models in the segment — the Escape, Bronco Sport, Bronco, Explorer, Expedition, Mustang Mach-E, and Edge — have been caught in at least one significant action since 2020.
Two recalls in particular stand out. The first, designated 26V-123 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, covers 889,950 vehicles from model years 2020 through 2024 whose rearview cameras display inverted or flipped images — a direct violation of federal visibility standards. The Ford Escape accounts for the largest slice, with 516,780 vehicles affected. The Lincoln Aviator contributes another 110,696, and the Lincoln Corsair adds 84,241 more. Ford estimates a 100 percent defect rate across the affected population — meaning every single one of those cameras is compromised. No crashes or injuries have been reported, but the legal and safety implications of a rearview camera that shows you the road upside down are obvious.
A second, related recall — 26V-124 — covers 849,310 additional vehicles, this time for rearview cameras that go entirely blank, affecting 2020–2026 Broncos and 2021–2024 Edge models. Together, the two camera recalls alone account for nearly 1.74 million vehicles. Add in a separate wiper recall covering more than 604,000 SUVs, and the picture gets crowded fast.
Beyond visibility, cracked fuel injectors — which carry a fire risk — and brake software faults have also triggered actions across the SUV lineup. Door latch defects capable of causing accidental lockouts or occupant entrapment round out a list that reads less like a recall log and more like a stress test.
Trucks: The Stakes Get Higher
For Ford, trucks aren’t just a product category. They’re the financial backbone of the entire company. The F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in the United States for more than four decades. So when electrical faults start disabling trailer brake lights, turn signals, and active braking systems while towing, the consequences aren’t abstract.
All five of Ford’s major truck and pickup nameplates — the Maverick, Ranger, F-150, F-150 Lightning, and Super Duty — have been swept into the recall wave. The towing-related failures are particularly concerning from a crash-risk standpoint: a truck hauling a trailer at highway speed, with compromised brake response and no functioning turn signals, is a physics problem waiting to happen. Some of the truck recalls overlap with the Bronco and Ranger brake issues flagged in the SUV category, underscoring how deeply interconnected Ford’s shared-platform architecture can make these problems.
The trucks fall within the broader 12.9 million vehicle total from 2025, with some individual actions exceeding 500,000 vehicles — including fuel pump and fuel injector campaigns that span model years and body styles alike.
Cars and Vans: Mustang Hangs On, Transits Pile Up
Ford’s passenger car lineup has shrunk considerably over the past decade, and the recalls reflect that. The Mustang — now the last traditional coupe and convertible in Ford’s domestic stable — has been flagged primarily for rearview camera defects consistent with the broader camera campaign. It’s a small footnote in the larger recall story, but a notable one given the Mustang’s cultural weight.
The commercial van segment is another matter. The Transit, E-Transit, and Transit Connect have all been hit with recalls covering braking failures, towing electrical faults, and visibility problems — the same categories plaguing the SUV and truck lines, but with amplified stakes. These aren’t weekend vehicles. They’re work tools, often loaded and towing, driven by contractors, delivery fleets, and tradespeople who depend on them daily. A braking defect in a fully loaded Transit isn’t a minor inconvenience.
The One That Got Away
Buried at the bottom of every Ford recall list is a conspicuous absence: the Ford GT. The mid-engine supercar — built as a spiritual successor to the GT40 that won Le Mans in 1966 — has escaped the 2020–2026 recall wave entirely. Production ended after the 2022 model year, and volumes were always minuscule by mass-market standards. Previous generations had their own minor issues — first-generation GT airbag concerns, second-generation hydraulic system quirks — but in the current recall era, the GT is clean.
It’s tempting to read something into that. The GT was handbuilt in small numbers with obsessive engineering attention. Every other Ford — from the cheapest Maverick to the most capable Super Duty — runs on shared platforms, shared software, shared suppliers. Scale creates complexity. Complexity creates failure modes. That’s not an excuse. But it might be an explanation.
What Comes Next
How bad does it get from here? At Ford’s 2026 pace — 17 recalls in the first two months, representing between 28 and 33 percent of the entire industry’s recall activity — the company is on track to approach or surpass last year’s record. Three of 2025’s recalls each topped one million vehicles, all involving rearview cameras. Five more exceeded 500,000, covering fuel pumps, injectors, and braking systems.
Ford insists the surge reflects proactive safety culture, not systemic failure — and NHTSA data supports the claim that Ford is self-initiating a large share of these actions rather than waiting for federal pressure. That distinction matters legally and reputationally. But for the owner of a 2021 Escape who’s now on their second recall notice in six months, the corporate rationale probably offers limited comfort.
The real test isn’t whether Ford can recall its way to safety. It’s whether the “testing to failure” approach it’s now applying to current production actually reduces the number of defects reaching customers in the first place — and whether the 2027 and 2028 model years look anything like the six that preceded them.
Fixing problems faster than you create them is admirable. Creating fewer of them would be better.
