Ford issues yet another rollaway recall, this time on 2020s
If it seems familiar, you’re probably at least forty years old: Ford has issued a recall on certain SUVs because they might start rolling while in Park. What’s more, the dash won’t show any warnings, and the gear won’t show up in the PRNDL. It was a problem that affected hundreds of thousands of cars Back When, but the reasons are different now.
The 2020 Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator suffer from a double whammy: the manual park release cover may not have been put in, which makes it easier to accidentally nudge the big SUVs into neutral—and Ford may have forgotten to take the vehicles out of Factory Mode, so you won’t even get a warning. Fortunately for Ford, this time only around 14,000 SUVs are affected.
Dealers will install the missing cover and put the instrument cluster into the right mode for you, if your SUV is one of the unlucky ones. Overall, the Ford team deserves some credit for recreating its historical problems with completely new, modern solutions.
Clark Westfield grew up fixing up and driving past-their-prime American cars, including various GM and Mopar V8s. He has ghostwritten auto news for the last few years, and lives in Farmingdale, New York.