Yes, I found them interesting as well. I wondered why most of the heat
and fury was going away from Ford and onto Firestone but the WSJ
articles explain that Firestone has lost their public relations
consultants. Ford used the same firm and the firm dropped Firestone for
the larger Ford account to avoid a conflict of interest. The legal
wrangling over the Firestone tires is only in the early stages. Ford may
be managing the crisis better now from a PR perspective but I suspect
that they will suffer a greater dollar financial loss than Firestone
after all is said and done. The injuries and deaths were largely caused
by rollover accidents and Ford apparently knew of this tendency in the
Explorer line. It recommended unusually low inflation pressure of the
rear tires to compensate for this instead of changing the vehicle
design. Ford is not out of the woods in this matter by any means. When I
read yesterdays WSJ article I noticed that the table shows that the
Explorer suffered far more rollovers per separation and that there were
NO fatalities listed in any other vehicle that was fitted with the
recalled tires. I am sure that the plaintiff's attorneys will make much
of these statistics to the detriment of the deeper pocket Ford.

Mark

Donna Stewart wrote:
>
> To follow up on Stuart's emails I just saw an article in today's Wall Street Journal  (second section) to the effect that the government's standards for tire regulation and testing are outdated.  There were a couple of related articles on the Firestone debacle - looked interesting.