The cruise control recalls were great. Basically, the engineers figured it would be a great idea to route power through a cruise control switch at all times (even when parked). Then to really make the design awesome, they put the switch next to hydraulic brake lines. Over the years corrosion does its thing and would cause cause the switch to arc into the brake fluid.

A neighbor of mine had a Ford Explorer affected by it, he ignored the recall notice. It eventually burst into flames one day while parked in his driveway and the fire department had a great time smashing his windows while putting it out.

Anyways Ford knew about the problem in the mid-90's but was in love with this design so much that they kept it in place until 2004. Check out the list! https://www.autosafety.org/ford-cruise-control-deactivation-...

I lost count of how many recalls there were for my Ford Focus, including one for my transmission software after 4 trips to my dealer to report a problem they wouldn’t fix.

I would strongly recommend avoiding Ford products.

The thing is, even though I've pretty much always owned a car with a foreign nameplate, I really like most of the domestic cars I've driven. Most Fords look attractive to me, Chevys are getting better lookswise, and most of the time the suspension tuning in domestic cars seems better than I'm used to in Japanese vehicles. I drove a Chevy Sonic once, which is, I believe basically a Korean car, and the sort of car often described as a "shitbox", but I was amazingly planted when going over bumpy pavement at high speed, unlike, say, Hondas that I've driven that feel like they want to skitter off the road.

But there's always been a dealbreaker. Frequently the transmission. I mean, even before it was fully verified that the DCT in the Focus was a disaster, I certainly expected it to have problems and never understood why they would take the risk on a low-end car. People always blame "bean counters" for automotive failures, but it seems (based on my imagination as an outsider) like it's more an unhealthy intersection of cost-cutting and engineers that want to be daring.