I’ve written before that Detroit needs to reduce the risk of buying its cars by providing proper customer care. Unfortunately, I recently learned that Ford might be cutting back on the out-of-warranty assistance it provides to customers.

While visiting a close friend of my wife, we learned that her husband’s truck had an electronic controller in its 4WD system fail two weeks after the warranty ended. I have no idea if this is a common failure. But many times manufacturers pick up the cost of failures when they occur so soon after the warranty ends.

I visited a Ford dealer with him. The service writer told us that in the past Ford would probably have covered the part, but that in recent months they rarely have. As far as he could tell, Ford has cut way back on their out-of-warranty assistance as part of their effort to avoid running out of cash.

While I can certainly understand Ford’s need to avoid running out of cash, I’m not sure that cutting back on customer care is the best way to do this.