ford dealer says they go by vin # & mine doesn't show they have to repair it.my 99 contour allows the key to be removed without the transmission being put in park. the steering column should be replaced. recall shows the manufact. date to be 1-04-1999 to 1-14-1999. my car was manufactured 8-1988. Why should they be allowed to avoid repairing my car if it's manufactured at different date than most of the recalls, since it has the same symptoms? thank you for your help!Recalls are negotiated between the Feds and the auto manufactures. Always at issue is how many years do they have to cover back before the defect became a known problem.
There’s a lot of politics behind Recalls and identical problems that occur outside of the VIN range are not a rare thing. Ford is not the only one guilty of this; they all do it.
Your car is 13 years old. This is the least of your problems. Enjoy that it still runs.
There are millions of different vehicles out there with this “problem”. Most drivers don’t try to pull the key out until the vehicle is in park so they don’t even know it exists. Just make sure the vehicle is in park before you exit the vehicle.
You don’t wait 13 years to cry foul !
Under normal circumstances,
If you had brought your car to the attention of a dealer when the recall was issued ( March 1999 ) Ford may have allowed the exception, they often do. But certainly NOT 13 years after the fact.
How long have you had the related problem and known about the recall ?
When any company runs into a situation which might turn into a recall ( refrigerators, baby car seats…any company ) they initiate an investigation as to the scope of the products involved.
In a situation like this, they needed to know about your car, and everyone elses not initially included, back in 99 so they could re-assess the total of cars to include.
Not 13 years later.
I’m trying to figure out why this is even an issue, especially on a car this old. What I means is, who cares? And why? I also don’t proclaim to know a whole lot about steering columns & their links to the lock cylinder, but I also can’t figure out why an inappropriate key removal would require a new steering column.
Thank you everyone for your response, (missile man) you're correct that we don't know till we pull the keys in that situation I didn't know till about 1 year ago, & that's the reason I didn't notify ford in 1999 (ken) when recall went into effect. I never received a letter about the recall in 99.Letters are not always sent out in regards to Recalls. The law only says that the information must be put out in the public domain so getting something in the mail is not a given.
I agree that if a problem exists that causes a Recall then all vehicles affected by it should be taken care of but it doesn’t work that way; unfortunately. As I said, there’s a lot of politics behind Recalls. A lot.
Look at the Honda ignition switch Recall as an example. That only covers certain years but the problem has been around a long time and affects models that are nowhere near the VIN or year model range the Recall covers. Basically, the car owner has to take the lumps and move on.
Exact same thing happened to my '96 Lexus ES300 in 2006. Stuff happens to 10 year old cars.
How do you know that the steering column has to be replaced to fix your Contour? Mine was a much smaller repair job.
There’s actually a whole list of ways a company can notify of a recall.
In addition, as of this writing cars purchases by rental agencies do not have to be repaired under recalls. There is currently legislation in the Senate to correct this oversight, in response to a year-long investigation. I just read about the legislation this morning.