The automotive industry’s increasingly complex vehicles improved in overall quality during the past year, with Ford Motor (F.N) taking the top initial quality award among mass market brands, according to data from J.D. Power.
The achievement for Ford comes after years of lagging scores in the closely watched ranking, as well as costly warranty issues. The automaker is also under a consent order from a federal auto safety regulator, which found that Ford delayed recalling some vehicles with defective rearview cameras.
Vehicle quality across the industry notched its best year-over-year improvement since 1997, J.D. Power said, citing survey data from nearly 80,000 car buyers or lessees of new 2026 model-year vehicles. Ford said it was its first time leading new-vehicle quality in 16 years.
“This is a culmination of a lot of hard work by thousands of our team members across North America,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a press conference on Wednesday.
The firm measures industry quality by the total number of owner-reported problems in the first 90 days of ownership, per 100 vehicles. In last year's report, J.D. Power gave the industry a score of 192 problems, which decreased this year to 175.
Even as vehicles are becoming more packed with software, and as drivers were vexed by connectivity snags with systems such as CarPlay, automakers have focused on improving vehicle quality through delivering simple features.
FORD'S YEARSLONG QUALITY PUSH
Ford credited its improvement to a yearslong effort to break down company “silos,” in which issues were quickly fixed but root problems often lingered. The automaker over the years has combined teams including engineering, supply chain and manufacturing to streamline efforts.
In the latest J.D. Power report, Ford notched a score of 152 problems per 100 vehicles, a significant improvement from its 193 problems from the prior year’s data.
The automaker had already signaled that its quality was improving when it awarded record bonuses to employees earlier this year, with Farley citing best-in-decade initial quality, Reuters first reported.
RECALLS COMPLICATE PICTURE
Complicating Ford’s improved quality status is the steady stream of recalls plaguing the company, which largely reflect problems in vehicles from years past. It leads the industry with 51 recalls so far this year, followed by Stellantis (STLAM.MI) with 19 recalls.
Ford has consistently logged an industry-topping volume of recalls since 2020, the year Farley began as CEO and declared quality one of his top priorities.
The car giant says it expects recall numbers to decrease in the future, although it may take time for these efforts to show results because vehicle problems often surface after many years on the road.
Ford Chief Operating Officer Kumar Galhotra said that newer vehicles are showing clear improvement compared with vehicles designed between 2013 and 2020.
Industrywide, automakers are struggling with infotainment systems, where issues around Android Auto and Apple CarPlay connectivity accounted for an increase in problems, J.D. Power found.
One of the biggest drivers of improvement was cupholders, which J.D. Power said had more accessible locations within vehicles and capacity to hold various sizes of bottles.
