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Buy American? Not Again

Spit spark plugs sour one consumer on U.S.-made cars

By Joe Benton
ConsumerAffairs.com

October 19, 2007

Like many consumers cited in a recent J.D. Power and Associates study, Joe wanted to buy American. Or, as he told us, he wanted “to provide a nice American-made ride for my family,” but couldn't afford a new truck.

The Navigator looked like a great deal. The price was $2,000 less that the book value and the big SUV had only 136,000 miles on the odometer.

But the great deal blew up in Joe's face when the used Lincoln Navigator spit a spark plug -- a fate common to many Ford trucks and SUV owners.

Here is Joe's story.

“While driving to a union meeting my 1998 Lincoln Navigator made a sound like the exhaust had blown apart.”

The check-engine light came on as the truck began to lose power. Joe “limped it another mile to the meeting, popped the hood and found that gasoline had leaked over the entire back side of the engine,” he said.

Joe found air and fuel coming out of the hole where the number 4 spark plug should have been and fuel shooting out from where the plug had lodged in the engine.

“The ignition pack for that plug was shredded,” Joe said. He had owned the used Lincoln Navigator for just three weeks.

The threads in the number 4 spark plug hole in the Navigator were stripped.

Joe soon discovered it would cost too much money to repair the truck at a Lincoln dealership. The cost is sometimes more than $3,000 to replace the engine head after a spit plug incident.

Joe found a junkyard motor with 80,000 miles for $1,400, bought $350 in parts from Ford and paid a mechanic $900 to install everything. “So much for under book,” Joe said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has repeatedly looked the other way, insisting there are no safety issues involved.

Of course, that answer doesn't set very well with Ford owners like Dan of Huntington Beach, whose truck burned to the ground because of a spark plug spit-out.

But NHTSA is sticking to its guns, insisting there's nothing unsafe about vehicles that stall out, then sometimes burst into flames.

Ford refuses to accept any responsibility for the affair that has cost thousands of consumers thousands of dollars. Admitting an engineering flaw could cost the struggling automaker hundreds of millions of dollars in recall costs and labor.

Instead, Ford is investing in spiffy marketing, fancy advertising and consumer research in hopes of boosting its lagging sales.

The J.D. Power study found that import buyers who reject a domestic model more frequently point to perceived vehicle attribute deficiencies as key reasons for rejection, such as concerns for reliability, gas mileage or poor resale value.

Joe would go along with that. He said he has had his last buy-American automtoive experience. Or, as he put it:

“Anybody want to buy a 98 Navigator with a junkyard engine or can you say Honda?”

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