A Ford Explorer in Austin, Texas has people thinking about who and what they park next to these days.
The Explorer spontaneously caught fire and destroyed itself and a car in the adjacent parking spot. It's one of the latest incidents in a nationwide series of fires involving Ford cars and trucks.
My office was entertained for several hours watching as a Ford Explorer belonging to a colleague started to smoke and then burst into flames, a reader reported to ConsumerAffairs.com.
"This being Texas, we're all talking about the car-b-que," our reader joked.
Not only did it burn up, but the car next to it towards which the wind was blowing the flames was also destroyed. The upwind car was damaged, but not as severely.
Our reader suggests that his colleague apparently missed the recall notice.
Ford has struggled for several years to recall all of the vehicles still a risk form a cruise control switch that may burst into flames without warning.
Security people around the office building tried to contain the fire but failed. The fire department arrived after the fired had destroyed the vehicles.
Ford has recalled about 10.5 million vehicles since 1999 to try to fix a faulty cruise control switch that can short out and start a fire when vehicles are parked and unattended. Despite the many recalls, thousands of vehicles with the faulty switches remain on the road.
Earlier this month, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) called on Ford and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to try harder to get fire-prone vehicles off the road.
"It's unacceptable that these dangerous cars remain on the road and it's obvious that NHTSA needs to do more and work with Ford to fully fix this problem," Kerry, who sits on the subcommittee that has jurisdiction over NHTSA, wrote in an e-mail.
