Ford Motor Company ripoff Dearborn Michigan

Last weekend, my family and I where going to go to the Zoo when suddenly my car begins to overheat. A friend came out and looked it this weekend and told me it was the intake manifold.

After doing research on this, i found so much info on this manifold and the actual letter that ford sent their dealerships concerning this manifold.

First, let me tell you how we ended up with the 1997 crown victoria we now have. We first bought a 1998 Ford Contour. After anything and everything happening with this car,(transmission going out, water pump blowing up, sensors going out left and right and well over 3000.00 in repairs) we ended up trading it in on what we could afford. At the time, we where still 4 yrs away from paying off the Contour and we only got 5,000.00 for the trade in value of the contour. So that left us a nice little sum of 4,000.00 to add to whatever car we decided to get. So they showed us a nice 1997 crown victoria that had been repossed from the previous owners. Bam with it having been repossed, and sitting on their lot for more then 30 days, we ended up with this nice crown victoria.

Now, we bought this car in March of 2001, the dated letter i found being sent to the dealships over this manifold was Demember 2001. We where the owners correct? we should have been notified what was going on with the manifolds you would think. No that wasn't the case. According to a Ford Rep this morning that i talked to. Since we was not the actual people to purchase the brand new car, we didn't get a recall notice. He even went as far to tell me that my VIN number wasn't even involved in the recall which he stated wasn't really a recall, it was more or less a extended warrenty to get the manifold replaced.

After thinking about it, I decided to call the dealer in which we purchased the car from. The lady i spoke with told me that my car was included in the recall but the recall wasn't issued until 14 December 2005. (wait did i just say 2005? yes). She told me that the recall had expired for my car in July of 2004. Now, being owners of the vehicle from March of 2001 until present day, not once did we recieve ANY letter telling us about manifold being faulty.

The one thing i really dont' understand is why am I getting two different stories, one from ford corpration and one from a ford dealship. I mean don't us that keep ford's money coming in have a right to get our cars fixed also? You know, my family is not in the middle or higher class but repairs eat away until you have no money what so ever. So now here it is summer time, kids to be able to get out and have fun and I'm stuck at home with a broke down car since ford didn't bother to inform me of a faulty manifold and doesn't even bother to help when they knew it could crack.

This being said, and after all the trouble i've had out of ford, this will be my last purchase of a ford. 2 out of 2 down for the count.

Oh and i ask the lady at the dealership how much it would run to have this manifold fixed, she told me 900.00 roughly. I don't have 900.00 laying around and i'm sure no one else does either.

Tandy
Indianapaolis, Indiana
U.S.A.