Reliability results, most improved: Ford Five Hundred and Freestyle

Panel members received a sneak preview of the latest Vehicle Reliabiity Survey results last week, and these can now be reached from the home page. While going over the data, a few things struck me as notable. Among them, the Ford’s large sedan and crossover / wagon appear to have improved greatly from their first year to their second.

The 2005 Ford Five Hundred and Freestyle average about 0.9 successful repair trips per year, about the same as many other domestic models and on the high end of the range. The 2006s, in contrast, rarely require a trip to the shop. Twenty owners reporting for a total of 105 months have reported only a single trip that included a successful repair. While the rate might be higher with a larger sample, it’s clearly much lower than the 2005’s.

This isn’t an isolated strong result for Ford. The Ford Fusion continues to score fairly well, with about 0.5 successful trips per year. This is a very good number for a first-year design: a few first-year Japanese designs scored in the 0.7 to 0.8 range.

If these Ford products continue to have low repair rates as they age, they clearly won’t deserve the “Fix or Repair Daily” moniker. Hopefully the scores don’t take a hit from the changes being made for 2008, among them a new/old name: Taurus. As always, TrueDelta hopes to have initial results for those cars in August.