Firestone's Tire Crisis

By John Greenwald

One sizzling day last summer, Mabel and Rafael Valdes packed their two daughters and Mabel's grandmother into the family's Ford Explorer and headed down Highway I-75 for the 2-hr. drive from Coral Gables to Naples, Fla. But on the way, according to Mabel and her attorney, the tread tore loose--"like peeling a banana," says Mabel--from one of the Explorer's rear Firestone tires, causing the sport-utility vehicle to spin out of control, slam into a guardrail and flip over. The accident badly injured Valdes and her family and left her grandmother dead.

It was thus with a sense of relief mixed with anger that Valdes learned last week that Firestone, a part of Japan's Bridgestone Corp., had voluntarily recalled 6.5 million of its most widely used tires. The action hit Firestone and Ford where they live--in the automaker's best-selling models. Included in the recall are Firestone Radial ATX and ATX II tires, which are standard equipment on Ford's hot Ranger pickups. Also included are the Wilderness AT tires that Firestone makes in Decatur, Ill., for the Mercury Mountaineer and the Ford Explorer, the No. 1 suv in America. Firestone says the Decatur plant is the source of all the Wilderness AT problems. Other affected models include Mazda's Navajo and B-Series pickups. In all cases, only 15-in. tires are being recalled.

The action targets Firestone tires that have been implicated in 46 traffic deaths and roughly 300 accidents in the U.S. While the mishaps cover nine years, the timing of the recall is being hotly debated by lawyers and crisis-management experts. One of the critical questions: At some point, do seemingly isolated events form an ominous pattern that merits investigation and then action? To Valdes, an elementary-school teacher who has filed a lawsuit against Firestone, the recall was "too late, because so many people have died, including my grandmother."

The huge recall is scheduled to begin in the South and take up to 18 months to complete nationwide. But nervous motorists from all points of the compass have flooded Ford and Firestone dealerships with requests-cum-demands for new tires, immediately. Many will be turned away, at least for now, until production gears up. Meanwhile, Ford and Firestone issued conflicting instructions for inflating the recalled tires. While Ford recommended a pressure of 26-to-30 p.s.i., Firestone insisted on 30 p.s.i. "It just burns you up," says Sue Gorski, a Chicago dental assistant who drives a '98 Explorer. "It feels like driving a car with a ticking time bomb underneath."

Injured motorists or their families have brought more than 100 suits against Ford and Firestone since 1992, including at least 10 complaints about tread separation that the companies have settled. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) had been hearing complaints about the tires since 1991 but didn't act until last May, when the numbers spiked following an investigative report by TV station KHOU in Houston. Says Jon Goldberg, director of crisis management for the Edelman Worldwide p.r. firm: "As the evidence mounted, they [Firestone] could have moved much more quickly to take action."

Red lights flashed in the Middle East and South America last summer when treads began to peel off Ford Explorers sold in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Ford initially blamed the problem on the tendency of some Saudi drivers to underinflate their tires to get better traction when driving across the desert. But that scarcely explained the rash of similar failures on the other side of the globe in desert-free Venezuela.

Ford grew increasingly alarmed last year when similar failures cropped up in the U.S. Southwest. Working through Arizona dealers, the company collected tires from 200 Explorer owners. Ford and Firestone then X-rayed and sliced up the tires but could identify no defect. In the meantime, Ford quietly recalled vehicles from Venezuelan and Persian Gulf markets and replaced 40,000 to 60,000 high-mileage Firestone tires with those made by Goodyear. "You would have thought that they [Firestone] would have got the message," says a Ford official, in a none too subtle hint that the tiremaker should have addressed its own problems.

Firestone decided on the recall last week after poring over accident reports with Ford and huddling with NHTSA officials. Gary Crigger, Firestone's executive vice president, phoned his bosses in Tokyo to advise them of the decision. That seemed to catch the Japanese company flat-footed, although it publicly took credit for the order. Just two weeks ago, Bridgestone chief executive Yoichiro Kaizaki forecast rising profits for the rest of 2000. But last week Bridgestone said the recall at Firestone--which accounted for some 40% of Bridgestone's $20.4 billion in 1999 revenues--could cost the Japanese company as much as $600 million this year.

Tokyo seemed hurt and disgusted by the recall affair. Bridgestone bought Firestone in 1988, a decade after the American firm nearly sank in the aftermath of another recall--a record 14.5 million tires in 1978. "We spent the past 10 years trying to rebuild the image of Firestone," says Kenichi Kitawaki, Bridgestone's p.r. manager. "Then this happened."

Both companies will now have to convince customers that the tire problems are limited to just a few models and that the Firestone name can still be trusted. But first they will have to contend with scenes of crumpled SUVs and shredded tires and with accident victims like Dr. Rene Brignoni, a Florida oral surgeon who survived an Explorer rollover with a broken nose and severe lacerations last April when, he alleges, the tread suddenly peeled away from a Firestone tire. Brignoni is suing Firestone, charging that the company behaved irresponsibly. Says he: "I feel very fortunate to be alive, and I feel extremely sorry for families who have lost relatives or have been seriously injured." For Firestone, overcoming the images of such tragedies will be no small challenge.

--Reported by Mike Eskenazi/New York, Julie Grace/Chicago Elisabeth Kauffman/Nashville, Tim Larimer/Tokyo and Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit

With reporting by Mike Eskenazi/New York, Julie Grace/Chicago Elisabeth Kauffman/Nashville, Tim Larimer/Tokyo and Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit