Ford is pulling back more than 110,000 vehicles across two separate safety campaigns after federal regulators flagged defects that could leave drivers without functioning windshield wipers in bad weather, or without drive power at all.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration identified the problems in two distinct recall actions covering a combined 110,626 vehicles in the United States. One campaign targets 67,842 Mustang and Mustang GTD models with a windshield wiper and washer system defect. The other covers 42,784 Mustang Mach-E electric SUVs with a rear differential pinion shaft prone to fracture, the New York Post reported.
Dealers will repair or replace affected components at no cost to owners. Ford shares were flat in early trading and remain up more than five percent year to date.
The wiper defect is the more common of the two by volume. Under certain cold-weather conditions, the windshield wipers on affected Mustang and Mustang GTD vehicles may lock into the high-speed setting, and the washer system may stop working properly. NHTSA warned that reduced visibility from the malfunction could increase the risk of a crash, a straightforward safety hazard that any driver in a winter storm can immediately appreciate.
The Mach-E problem is mechanically different and, in some respects, more alarming. The rear differential pinion shaft on affected electric SUVs may fracture outright. A fracture could cause a complete loss of drive power while the vehicle is in motion. Worse, if the SUV is parked without the parking brake engaged, the broken shaft could allow unintended vehicle movement, meaning a parked Mach-E could roll on its own.
Both defects carry NHTSA's finding that they increase crash risk. The source material does not report any confirmed injuries, crashes, or deaths linked to either issue prior to the recall.
These two campaigns do not exist in a vacuum. Ford has been cycling through recalls at a pace that raises serious questions about the automaker's quality control infrastructure.
In 2025 alone, Ford logged 154 recalls covering roughly 13 million vehicles, Breitbart reported earlier this year. Among those were a recall of 197,000 Mustang Mach-E EVs and another covering 850,000 trucks and SUVs. Then, in early 2026, Ford recalled more than 615,000 additional vehicles, over 604,000 for potential front windshield wiper motor failures in 2020, 2022 Explorer, Escape, Lincoln Aviator, and Lincoln Corsair models, and another 11,431 for driveshaft friction weld failures that could cause sudden loss of drive power.
The recurring themes are hard to miss: wiper systems that fail, drivetrains that break, and vehicles that lose power without warning.
Yahoo! Finance offered a blunt assessment of the situation, as quoted by Breitbart:
"Management wants the market to believe that it has recalled older, poorly built vehicles and that the quality issues are behind it. That means the 2025 recalls, which totaled 154 and 13 million vehicles, won't happen again. But, it has happened again, and with it, doubts that recalls are not a part of Ford's regular operations."
That was written months ago, about the 615,000-vehicle recall wave. Now here Ford is again, with another six-figure recall, and the same categories of defect.
The Mustang Mach-E's repeated appearances on recall lists deserve particular scrutiny. Ford's electric vehicle division has already been a financial sinkhole, generating significant losses in 2025. Every fresh Mach-E recall reinforces the concern that Ford rushed its EV lineup to market before the engineering was fully baked.
A pinion shaft that can fracture in the rear differential is not a cosmetic issue or a software glitch that can be patched over the air. It is a fundamental mechanical failure in the drivetrain, the kind of problem that erodes consumer confidence in electric vehicles at exactly the moment the industry is trying to build it.
Ford has not disclosed the root cause of the pinion shaft fracture, nor has the company specified the model years affected in either of the new recall campaigns. Those gaps matter. Owners deserve to know whether this is a manufacturing defect confined to a specific production run or a design flaw baked into the platform.
Several practical questions remain unanswered. The specific model years covered by both recalls have not been publicly identified in the available reporting. The "certain cold-weather conditions" that trigger the wiper defect have not been defined. Ford has not said when dealers will begin performing repairs or how owners of affected vehicles will be notified.
For the 42,784 Mach-E owners whose vehicles may have a drivetrain component that could snap, the immediate takeaway is simple: use the parking brake every time you park. That is not advice anyone should need for a modern vehicle, but here we are.
Credit where it is due: NHTSA identified both defects, and Ford is conducting the recalls. Dealers will fix the vehicles for free. The system, on paper, is working as designed.
But the system working as designed and the product working as designed are two very different things. When an automaker racks up 154 recalls in a single calendar year, then opens the next year with hundreds of thousands more, the recalls themselves become evidence of a deeper institutional problem. The question is no longer whether Ford can fix individual vehicles. The question is whether Ford can fix the process that keeps producing vehicles that need fixing.
Consumers who bought a Mustang or a Mach-E did not sign up to be beta testers. They paid full price for a finished product. They deserve one.
At some point, a recall is not a sign that the safety system caught a problem. It is a sign that the quality system missed one, again.
