Detroit Free Press Poll Shows Faith in Ford is Slipping

A story in the Detroit Free Press reports that most Americans distrust Ford Motor Co.'s claim that the blame for deaths and injuries in rollovers of its Explorer sport-utility vehicle lies solely with faulty Firestone tires, a poll showed Monday. The survey, a stinging rebuke of Ford that could add weight to recent calls for an investigation of its Explorer by U.S. auto safety regulators, was published in the weekly trade magazine Automotive News. It was conducted last week after the warring heads of Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone Inc., a unit of Japan's Bridgestone Corp., testified before Congress about Firestone blowouts that have killed 203 people and injured more than 700 on U.S. roadways.

In the survey in Automotive News, 74 percent of the 1,412 respondents said the Explorer rollovers were from a deadly combination of the vehicle and the tires. Thirteen percent said tires alone were responsible for the accidents, and another 13 percent said the Explorer alone was to blame. A full 43 percent of participants in the survey gave Ford a poor ranking for its level of honesty in handling the Firestone tire recall, and 31 percent rated its honesty as fair. Twenty-six percent said Ford, the world's second-largest automaker, deserved to be ranked excellent or good for honesty.