Skip to footer

Top 5 most important product recalls in US history

Product recalls happen nearly every day, but these five had a lasting impact. Can you guess which product recall was the most significant?

2. Ford Explorers and Firestone tires

Willis Knight/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/AP/File
In this 2000 file photo, Julian Samuels talks to Arlington firefighters at the scene of his accident in his Ford Explorer on Interstate 30 in Arlington, Texas. Ford's recall of millions of vehicles with faulty Firestone tires effectively ended its 100-year working relationship with the tire company and badly damaged its reputation.

Date: 1991-2001

Why it’s important: Recalls are a routine feature of the auto industry, for problems as big as failing breaks and as minor as trunks that won’t stay open. That’s a good thing; it means automakers are being proactive about customer safety. As a result, auto recalls don’t tend to tarnish a company’s image the way a food recall can. Toyota, for example, had to recall 7.4 million vehicles worldwide in October 2012 due to faulty window switches on a number of models. But US Toyota sales in November were impressive, up 17.2 percent from November 2011.

An exception was Ford’s troubles with its popular Explorer SUV in the 1990s and early 2000s. The vehicle came with Firestone tires, which had tread separation problems. That, combined with the Explorer’s top-heavy weight caused rollover problems, leading to between 200 and 250 deaths over a decade. Ford recalled millions of its SUVs equipped with Firestone tires, and its reputation suffered. The scandal ended the century-old relationship between Ford and Firestone, with each company blaming the other for the problems.

4 of 5
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.