CARS.COM — Safety regulators have upgraded their investigation of exhaust fumes in the cabins of Ford Explorer and Police Interceptor SUVs, and added two more model years to the probe.
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation has raised its preliminary probe to a formal engineering analysis and expanded the range of vehicles to include 2016 and 2017 SUVs. The probe now covers about 1.33 million 2011-17 Explorers and Interceptors. An engineering analysis is the next level before a recall, though it may or may not lead to a recall.
NHTSA's latest filing on the issue indicates that it has recorded 2,719 complaints regarding the problem from consumers, warranty claims, dealers and police. The agency also has reports of three crashes and 23 other incidents involving 41 injuries. Most of the reported injuries indicated nausea, headaches or light-headedness, though two police incidents alleged crashes with injuries, and a third police incident also reported injury, allegedly from carbon-monoxide exposure.
Ford is cooperating with regulators and has issued multiple technical service bulletins related to the complaints with procedures for dealer service personnel to address the problem, though NHTSA's filing indicates, "Concerns over the effectiveness of the procedures have been raised by vehicle owners in some cases." The NHTSA engineering analysis will look at the effectiveness of those service procedures.
NHTSA said it has been testing Explorers at its lab in Ohio, and also tested Interceptors in the field and found no data to link carbon-monoxide poisoning to the injury incidents, though testing indicated higher CO levels in some situations. It also said that with help from police departments, it has found that at least the Interceptor versions of the SUV in some cases are experiencing small exhaust manifold cracks that might be a cause of exhaust odor.
