So my mom is backing out of the Wal-Mart with cold groceries (and such) when as she shifts to drive to go forward she gets about 10 feet before we hear a LOUD "CRUNCH". It sounded like it came from the back, and like we had lost our entire rear axle. Well... Not so much... It was our front passenger side axel
So we get out and god is it ugly. The entire wheel is slanted at maybe a 45 degree angle towards the freaking car. It looks so bad even a idiot wouldn't try to drive it away.
So we call a tow truck and get it towed to our trusted mechanic.
Now it's a 2003 Ford Windstar. The mechanic pretty much tells us the car is financially speaking toast. We strongly agree. So we ask him to do whatever needs to be in order to scrap it. Well after a week he still had not got to it...
All of a sudden we get a letter (randomly) from Ford pretty much saying their front, and rear frames are complete garbage. Apparently the problem is road salt beating the shit out of the frames - http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/probl ... pe=VEHICLE
Anyways... So we call up the mechanic, and show him the recall and he's pretty much like "Ya that's without question what broke". But Ford has to agree so it needs to go to a dealership. My mom is like okay "I'll just call Geico to get it towed". Our mechanic was like hell no, and had it towed at his expense (his shop doesn't even own a tow truck).
So here is where it gets fun. This one dealership at it's peak had 63 Windstars on their lot that needed fixed. Needless to say it took them a bit to get to it (almost two weeks). Please note that was actually the worst part of this entire ordeal. So Ford says this is indeed the problem, so they will pay for a free rental until this problem is solved.
Now I've never seen this problem, so I'm expecting some small cheap car. No. Not even close. My mom gets a 2010 Chevy Colorado LT. She loved the truck but eventually decided for gas price reasons to switch to a 2011 Chevy Malibu Flexfuel (and she could have got anything on the lot including the Dodge Charger). Needless to say my mom was quite content with this. Frankly she would have been fine if Ford took their time with the car.
So Ford is like - Well we are going to buy you out. Then their like - We are going to fix it. This went back and forth like that for a solid 4 days. Frankly we didn't care what they decided to do. They would either fix it, and while they were doing that my mom would have a very nice car, or they would buy the car, and I know for a fact manufactures pay good money on recall related buyouts.
Finally they say their going to fix it. Period.
Well that was 3 months ago (almost exactly).
So the other day they call up my mom and say they have changed their mind again. Now they want to buy the car out (after spending only god knows now much on the rental for 3 months). They offered my mom $1,200 more then the KBB value in excellent condition (and we all know there is no such thing as a excellent condition car with 93k miles on it).
So of course my mom accepted.
I won't get into the used car she bought because that has littler or nothing to with this story, but I think she got a good deal on that too (although the dealership has a very good reputation for treating their customers right).
ld;dr? My mom's car broke with a recall related problem, and Ford treated my mom like a queen. I'm very impressed. (And I'm a Chevy/GM guy)
