The pain on Jim Farley's face is evident when he speaks about one of the worst experiences at Ford Motor Co. since he took the CEO job nearly six years ago: The 2023 launch of the redesigned F-Series Super Duty.
It was the fifth-generation redesign of Ford's hot-selling and hugely profitable pickup, but its launch was plagued with a cascade of quality control problems such as software glitches, a shortage of semiconductor chips and more. Ford had to park thousands of the trucks in vacant parking lots, such as Kentucky Speedway near Ford's Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville — where the Super Duty is built — to call back the vehicles for quality inspections, production fixes and other completion work before the trucks were ready to send to dealerships.
"It was not painful for our customers. It was painful for us," Farley said. "We literally had to take tens of thousands of units, and put them in marshaling yards until they were good enough to send to the customer. There were hundreds of issues. Some of them very small, like software, some of them very big."
Farley spoke with the Detroit Free Press about quality in an exclusive interview via Teams Aug. 13 while he was trackside at Laguna Seca Raceway in Salinas, California. He outlined how Ford changed its culture and quality controls in the past few years to get past the disastrous Super Duty launch and to ensure it never happens again.
Ford appears to be on the right path having been ranked first by JD Power in an Intial Quality Survey this year among mainstream brands for the top quality in the first 90 days of vehicle ownership. But Farley knows that's just the start to Ford's long-term quality overhaul.
Farley revealed to the Detroit Free Press what runs through his mind daily in terms of keeping Ford's quality improvements going and mitigating Ford's historically high recall rate — a critical task because Ford's future is on the line. If Ford can continue to establish long-term quality and durability in its vehicles, it could, one day, match Toyota at both affordable vehicle prices and the high quality that the Japanese automaker — which was once Farley's employer — excels at.
"The real impressive part of Toyota and many of the Chinese (automakers) as well, but especially Toyota, is their sustainability of what they do," Farley said. "They never drop the ball. They never go backwards. They don't think there's an end. At Toyota, we had a really famous saying, that I think about every day: No problem. Big problem. In Toyota, even if you are perfect in quality and you're beating everyone, no one is happy. You're going for perfection."
Super Duty line in the sand
Farley called the Super Duty launch "a catalyst for change" at Ford. It taught the Dearborn-based automaker that for quality to improve, the culture at Ford needed to shift.
Therefore, in the past few years, the automaker has: hired hundreds of new leaders and technical specialists, made organizational changes to encourage better collaboration across divisions, increased the rigor and frequency of tests on engines and transmissions and created a cultural norm that is free of finger pointing and replaced it with a culture that emphasizes deep problem solving.
Today, if a Ford worker finds a flaw in a vehicle, the worker is praised for pointing it out. The flaw is not only fixed, but the company's experts dig to find the root cause. They correct it and put in safeguards to prevent it in the future, Farley said.
"In the past, we would have released that (Super Duty) and it would go to the dealers, and then we would have recalls. We didn't want to pass along any of the problems to the customer," Farley said of lessons from the Super Duty launch. "It sounds very simple. But it's not because that means that we had to slow production down. We had to delay vehicle launches. We had to take the pain at the company to do that. It was very hard to do that. A lot of the people … who probably aren't at the company anymore ... were fighting that, saying, ‘It's good enough. It's good enough.’ "
On a 2023 fourth-quarter earnings call with analysts, Farley said that slowing down the Super Duty launch cost Ford a whopping $1 billion hit to its 2023 earnings before interest and taxes. But the troubled launch was "a line in the sand for this management team," Farley said at the time.
Ford faces a tough battle ahead
Karl Brauer, executive analyst at iSeeCars, remembers the problematic launch of the Super Duty, a vehicle that is foundational to Ford's profits.
"To have that widespread of a problem on Ford’s most important vehicle threatened everything from the company’s fiscal health to its reputation and trust with its most important customer base. It’s impossible to know the full extent of the damage," Brauer said. "I'm sure Ford did what it could to mitigate customer inconvenience."
Now Ford faces the challenge of a lifetime, Brauer said, because fixing quality in the short term might have been hard, but it is not nearly as hard as what lies ahead for Ford.
"The real challenge is executing high-quality new-vehicle launches and production over a period of five, 10, 15 years," Brauer said. "That’s what Toyota has done — created a reputation for high-quality cars based on decades of producing long-lasting vehicles that suffer minimal post-purchase issues. That kind of consistency goes beyond any single person or team, because people and teams change. Toyota has mastered the art of making high-quality vehicle production a company mantra that goes beyond any single person or team. That’s what Ford has to do, and it won’t be easy."
Two-thirds of Ford's leadership was replaced
Since that Super Duty launch, two-thirds of Ford's leaders in its industrial system, supply chain, manufacturing and engineering are new hires. Ford replaced those people who had the "It's good enough" mentality. Some of the hires came from outside of Ford, others are internal promotions.
The result of the leadership changes, as well as adopting more rigorous employee performance metrics, and several improvements Ford made to its engineering and manufacturing all contributed to Ford being ranked No. 1 among mainstream brands on the Initial Quality Survey in June.
But Ford still leads the industry in recalls with 63 so far this year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's website. As the Detroit Free Press reported in April, for the full year 2025, Ford issued 152 recalls affecting 12.96 million vehicles. But, in the 12 months between April 2025 to March 2026, Ford recalled 19.6 million vehicles, more than all of the 22 other automakers on the list combined, Brauer told the Free Press in April.
Ford leaders say many of those recalls reflect older Ford models and the automaker's quality ratings on its more recently launched vehicles has been improving. Also, during that April 2025 to March 2026 period, 15 recalls were responsible for approximately three-fourths of the vehicle volume, or about 15 million of those vehicles. For example,the February software recall for Ford's Integrated Trailer Control Module impacted nearly 4 million vehicles. In that recall, the vehicle's integrated trailer module could lose communication with the car, causing “a loss of brake and turn signal lights, or a loss of brake function.”
Still recalls are costly. According to publication Warranty Week, Ford's warranty accrual rate hit a record high of 4.5% in the first quarter last year, but came down to 4.1% by the second quarter. The accrual percentage rate represents the portion of revenue from each sale that a company sets aside for expected warranty claims. A higher accrual rate often reflects quality challenges. For comparison, General Motors' warranty accrual rate in early 2025 was 2.3% to 3.2%.
Ford paid $1.5 billion in warranty claims in the first quarter of 2025, and $1.3 billion in the second quarter of 2025, Warranty Week data showed. By comparison, Tesla paid $392 million in the first quarter 2025. But Ford leaders have said the initial quality improvement is helping Ford trim costs, noting that warranty costs dropped by $500 million for all of 2025 compared with the year prior.
There is a lot at stake if Ford is to rebuild long-term consumer trust in its quality, Morningstar autos analyst David Whiston said. Ford has to get quality right "every day forever," Whiston said.
"Ford hasn’t shown that it can do that yet but it’s heading in the right direction and the (Initial Quality Survey) is a big step forward," Whiston said. "I want to see how Ford ranks in the JD Power Vehicle Dependability Study in a few years' time as that measures quality over three years of ownership. That’s the real quality measure for me over the Initial Quality Survey, which is only the first 90 days."
Whiston said if Ford can keep the costly recalls and warranty problems away, then it has a realistic shot to take on Toyota's quality reputation and affordable cars and keep its warranty costs low.
Ford also faces heated competition from Chinese automakers, who are eager to get past the U.S.'s high tariffs that presently keep their cars from being sold in this country, added analyst Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions.
"The current competitive landscape makes quality a constantly moving target where everyone needs to aim ahead of Toyota, not just looking at the current ideals," Fiorani told the Detroit Free Press. "While the U.S. market is currently closed, there are dozens of automakers, especially from China, waiting for the door to crack open. Today’s competition is tough and failing to be ready for that bar to be raised is a recipe for disaster."
A focus on technical expertise
In its cultural overhaul, Ford put people in key roles where Farley said the company needed specific technical expertise and people with a low tolerance for mediocrity.
"We certainly added a lot of resources, but the leadership, the actual people running a plant, like Michigan Assembly Plant ... or our supply chain team, our seat supply chain person, or the head of engineering for our steering systems ... those kind of leaders in the company, we've changed in the last four years. Over two-thirds of that," Farley said. "We really were looking for quite a big culture shift with the new leadership team. What we wound up moving to is deep technical experience."
For example, in January 2023, Ford hired Bryce Currie from Johnson Controls to run Ford's manufacturing and labor relations. Currie, whose title is chief manufacturing officer, had worked at GE Aviation (now part of GE Aerospace) before Johnson Controls.
"We were looking for people like Bryce, who came from the aerospace industry, and the supply chain," Farley said. "Their quality standards are different than automotive because they can't have an engine failure. Bryce has a completely different perspective on zero defects. We brought the same kind of leadership shift in engineering and supply chain ... and everywhere else."
Farley said Ford also expected these new leaders — and empowered them — to step away from meetings and get out in the field close to the actual work.
"The cultural norm as a leader is to spend at least half your time with your teams out in the field, dealing with problems, solving problems," Farley said.
One of the new leaders elevated to take Ford's quality to the next level is Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering.
Poon has been at Ford for nearly 27 years, but in November 2025, Poon was tapped for this new position. In turn, most of Poon's direct reports also are new, charged with providing a precise focus on quality and mentoring those coming up behind them to continue the work.
"Not only are they good people leaders, not only are they good strategic thinkers at the senior levels of leadership, but more importantly, they are all engineers," Poon told the Detroit Free Press. "These are individuals that have done operations work themselves, meaning they have engineered parts. They have several product cycles that they have experienced and they have learned lessons of what has worked and what has not worked."
In total, those two-thirds of new people in those jobs equates to about more than 300 people changes. Some jobs are newly created positions — some are replacing other people. But they are all technical experts in their area.
Dispelling the myth of the gray beards
It's been widely reported that Ford rehired some 350 veteran engineers over a three-year period, who are internally dubbed the "gray beards," after Ford realized that its reliance on automation and artificial intelligence failed to resolve its costly quality issues. That's not exactly accurate.
First of all, many of the veteran engineers do not have beards nor gray hair. Rather, these are the group of people Poon referred to that Ford hired from outside or promoted from within to bring their deep experience as technical specialists to roles that will directly impact quality. Also, these engineers still use automated systems and AI for research and to develop high-quality designs and troubleshoot any potential problems.
For example, Technical Specialist Russell Mihm specializes in restraints, such as seat belts. He's been at Ford six years and had three promotions in that time and is part of the so-called "gray beards." He uses AI daily.
"It's like having a professor next to you," Mihm told the Detroit Free Press. "It's not something where you just feed it and believe everything it says. It is like having a professor right there where you can bounce ideas off of it, challenge yourself, kind of use it as a reflecting mirror."
He uses an AI notebook to do deep research on white papers and publications in his field. It also helps him study ways to test the durability of seat belts for improvements.
"We have the initiative for improving our durability over time," Mihm said. "AI has been a very helpful tool to utilize in understanding: OK, do I need to maybe target these cycles for this device or target this temperature for this device? And we have awesome technical specialists here at Ford that we also collaborate with. That's probably 90% of the work that goes into improving the testing of the product and then AI is an additional tool that we can implement."
Even Farley uses AI in his job as CEO, calling it "amazing."
"I use Microsoft Copilot every day," Farley said. "I ingest all my documents. It gets to see all my CEO documents, and I talk to it pretty regularly, and it helps me a lot. Where the same happens with an AI agent for buyers, our suppliers and our buyers. AI is very pervasive now. It's just kind of a copilot. Makes everyone smarter."
Ford's improving durability
Likewise, Technical Specialist Samuel Matt, another "gray beard," works on vehicle rear closures such as liftgates and van doors. Ford hired Matt from another automaker about 18 months ago. Matt's team has been working with global shipping giant DHL collecting data to understand how the company uses Ford's Transit commericial vans daily to ensure the van's rear cargo doors are durable.
"That customer tends to have upwards of 150 deliveries a day," Matt said.
Matt said DHL opens the rear cargo doors so wide they almost wrap around the vehicle so that the van can back up to the edge of a loading dock without damaging the doors. Matt's team has to be sure the hinges on the doors are going to hold up to 150 such wide door openings each day for the life of that vehicle. If a door hinge were to break on, say the 145th opening that day, that will be an unhappy customer.
"Making our product more durable for this specific customer is bringing better quality for them," Matt said. "They have less downtime. They have better ability to achieve their target of number of package deliveries per day. Durability goes hand in hand with quality."
Biggest change maker? Head of HR
When Farley became CEO in October 2020, he said about 94% of the salaried workforce got 100% of their bonus, "and we were at $4 stock." It didn't jibe.
"So I knew that not only would we have to make this change with the people, but we would have to really get serious about ... performance management," Farley said. "So we had to start setting objectives seriously."
Today, the salaried workforce receive bonuses based on meeting individual performance goals and Ford's Operating Behaviors, which were developed over the last couple of years ago. It includes such things as Ford rating salaried employees on their problem solving skills with the Ford colleagues, how well a leader holds their team accountable for hitting key performance metrics in their field and also their professional behavior — all of these targets are evaluated in a non-subjective way. Last year, only a few employees achieved 100% of their bonuses, Farley said. Most got 70% of it and a few overachievers got 130%, but the performance rating metrics are much tougher now, he said. Ford's stock price is at about $14 a share.
"So it was a combination of the people and performance management," Farley said of quality improvement. "In fact, if someone were to ask me, ‘Jim, who's been the most helpful to shift the culture forward?' I would say it's been Jen Waldo, the head of HR, who came from GE and Apple."
Make quality a priority in the plants
Another culture change at Ford was to drill in "a quality comes first mentality," Farley said.
"Every time I went to a plant, for example, or any of my leaders, if you were to ask them, when I became the CEO, what's more important: making production (targets) or quality? I'm talking (plant) operators," Farley said. "If you ask them that question, it was very clear to me five, six years ago, that they would always say, 'Oh, yeah, production.' "
Farley said that was a problem. But at the same time, Ford did not have the luxury of putting quality first and not making production numbers at all. So he harkened back to a mentality cultivated by his predecessor, former Ford CEO Alan Mulally: No finger pointing. Problem solve as a team.
"Just solve the problem. Measure how long it takes to solve problems from patient zero to whatever, whether it's a recall issue or a defect or something in a plant," Farley said. "I want all my team members in the place: If you're head of engineering, you're in the plants. If you're the head of supply chain, you're in the plants. You're close to the problems. We're here to solve problems for our factory workers, and they need to see that the team puts quality first outside of production."
As part of that, Farley said it was critical to drill in to factory workers that it is safe to call out a glitch in production if they see it and stop the assembly line.
Poon pointed to another recent change made a little over a year ago in monitoring Ford's production quality. The automaker started to randomly select one engine and one transmission every day from engine and transmission plants to pull off the line and rigorously test them.
"Every transmission, every day. Random, just a random engine," Poon said. "We've run them far in excess of what a customer will run. High engine speeds, full wide-open throttles, what we call it, at maximum torque, maximum speeds. And then after we do that, we tear it down. Every pack is laid out on a table. Experts go and review it, every day."
Farley: 'I've seen Ford fall in love and out of love with quality'
Back at the Laguna Seca race track, Farley leans back in serious contemplation when asked what's next for Ford's future quality story. He is confident Ford did what it had to culturally to fix the quality of the cars coming off the assembly lines.
"Now we're talking about a different thing, that's similar, but different, which is how to sustain it. That's a much deeper issue because I've seen Ford as a competitor ... being at Toyota," Farley said referring to his earlier career at at the Japanese automaker. "I've seen Ford fall in love and out of love with quality like four times in my career. So, I think the more exciting problem to solve is really sustainability of the culture around quality."
He admits he won't be able to answer that question for five to 10 years on whether Ford will really have a different culture that sustains quality improvements. But he said Ford is in a position to seriously compete against the best in terms of quality now.
"Whether we can sustain this over years and decades on the cost and the quality side with both Toyota and the Chinese (automakers) globally ... to actually win, and sustain it over time, we have not proven ourselves that we can do that yet," Farley said.
But he is confident everyone working at Ford today wants to build a company that can sustain high quality.
"I've been here long enough now where I've seen Ford gain it and lose it," Farley said. "I don't want that to happen ever again. I don't want to go through that cycle. It's very painful. It's time to change the cycle. It's time for us to go from repeating to winning, and that takes the team to be committed to sustainment and never being kind of done."
Jamie L. LaReau is the senior autos writer for USA TODAY Co. who covers Ford Motor Co. for the Detroit Free Press. Contact Jamie at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. To sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Jim Farley shares how a Ford quality disaster prompted plan for change
