Ford Motor Co. is celebrating a just-announced top ranking among mainstream car brands on JD Power’s Initial Quality Survey, hoping the good news can help reconcile a reputation stained by a record-setting year of recalls in 2025 and a decade of costly quality struggles.
In 2023, Ford placed 23rd on the same quality survey, which is based on consumer surveys and repair visit data collected by JD Power. In 2024, the automaker was 9th. In 2025, the brand backslid to 14th. Now, Ford has ranked first among mass market brands.
“This is a culmination of a lot of hard work by thousands of our team members across North America,” said Ford CEO Jim Farley on a virtual news conference on June 24.
Ford was edged slightly only by Genesis and Porsche, which both fall into the “premium” category, not mass market. Buick was the next-best nameplate belonging to a Detroit Three automaker on the list at fifth overall. Chevrolet took eighth, Lincoln (a Ford brand) ranked 13th; Jeep placed 15th; GMC took 17th. Other Detroit nameplates, such as Ram and Cadillac, did not place in the top 20.
Ford executives, during the virtual news briefing, said that an internal overhaul of quality assurance measures (previously detailed here in the Detroit Free Press) is bringing in the desired results. The issues with quality, which have stacked up over the last decade, have cost the automaker billions of dollars in warranty payouts and recall fixes.
Since 2023, the automaker has pioneered what it calls its “industrial system team,” a group of quality engineers who work across departments to audit, review and address quality issues before vehicles go to market. Previously, when issues would appear, a blame game would ensue between the development team, engineers, plant workers and suppliers.
Ford has brought back or hired 350 quality engineers to staff the team and work to ensure its cars and trucks are free of issues., instead of playing automotive Whac-a-Mole on issues after the vehicles leave the assembly line.
Ford says it has instituted a series of new protocols and rigorous testing procedures, saying the old way of hawking quality just wasn’t cutting it.
Humans replacing AI?
During the news conference, Ford executives said more than once that artificial intelligence programs used to analyze vehicle quality weren’t as effective as a set of highly trained eyes. Ford said it has brought back quality specialists — with younger engineers under their wings — to spot and fix quality issues while building a sharper AI interface.
“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product,” said Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, adding that AI interfaces are only as good as the information on which they are trained.
“We recognize that for us to enhance some of our automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence tools, we needed to ensure that they were trained by the most experienced individuals,” Poon said.
Along with more eyes on products and daily meetings about quality issues, Ford said it began a new process of auditing “every single” workstation where the brand’s vehicles are made. Ford said it employed this tactic for the launch of the new Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator, built at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville.
While the nuts and bolts of new vehicles are being scrutinized, so too are the computers behind the dashboard, the company said. Software is being stress tested rigorously, according to Poon.
“A vehicle is not a smartphone,” Poon said. “In consumer electronics, it might be OK to release software with bugs and fix it later in the next update. But when you’re dealing with a safety-critical environment, in which our families are riding in those vehicles, that ‘fix it later’ does not work.”
Ford: We ‘abuse’ our systems in the lab
Ford said it used to tear down an engine and hunt for issues within it every three months or so.
“Now, we are doing it every single day,” Poon said.
Performed by younger engineers under the guidance of more experienced ones, the teardowns are part of this new, more rigorous quality structure Ford says it’s employing.
“We now intentionally abuse our systems in the lab, running them at wide open throttle conditions in extreme heat for longer than our customers would,” Poon said.
Most automakers test their vehicles beyond what they expect their customers to do, but Poon claims Ford is “testing to a new standard” by pushing new products to the equivalent of 225,000 miles, or 15 years of driving.
Despite all the new steps, Ford said production cycles have not slowed, according to Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s chief operating officer.
“We put all this rigor in place … but it does not increase our cycle time to market,” Galhotra said.
Bryce Currie, Ford’s chief manufacturing officer, followed up: “Each area actually sees improvement (in timing), because waste is eliminated.”
COO: Recall woes a ‘lagging indicator’
From April 2025 to April 2026, Ford recalled 19.6 million vehicles — more than the rest of the auto industry combined.
But those recalls, said Galhotra, are a “lagging indicator” of the company’s quality performance. The mass of recalls is usually tied to older vehicles that hit the market before Ford’s new quality program.
Galhotra hopes that recall numbers will dwindle with time and the number of new Fords on the road begins to outpace the number of older vehicles.
“You can’t go from No. 23 to No. 1 in weeks or months,” Galhotra said. “If it was that easy, everyone would do it. So it might sound simple, but topping Toyota and Honda in quality is an enormous challenge, and we’re really proud that this team has been able to accomplish it.”
Liam Rappleye is an automotive reporter for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him: LRappleye@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Ford celebrates a top quality spot after years of quality struggles
Reporting by Liam Rappleye, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Liam Rappleye, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
