Job security is a key threat here, all the development work started during
the global financial crisis and Ford used that to gag any critisism of the DPS6.
All developed under laughing boy Mulally's watch, and kept buried by Fields and Hackett.
They kept buyers hanging for years all the while knowing this S***y gearbox could never
be properly fixed.
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Engineers and others involved in the Fiesta and Focus programs told the Free Press that speaking up during development of the vehicles was fruitless. They say they feared losing their jobs during the dramatic economic downturn that chased General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy.
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“This thing, in engineering terms, had its own momentum,” said a veteran engineer who attended hundreds of meetings involving the vehicles. “All of a sudden, the project took on a life of its own, and off it went.”
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On top of everything, U.S. Department of Justice fraud investigators opened a probe into Ford's conduct involving the transmission dating to 2010. It subpoenaed material earlier this year seeking to learn whether the company knew the transmissions were defective and couldn't be fixed and whether it lied to federal safety regulators.
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The seven Ford insiders interviewed for this article include engineers present for planning meetings as far back as 2006, and some people still employed by the company. One engineer still has his paper calendar entries listing who attended crisis meetings in 2010.
They shared detailed experiences on the condition that they not be named because they fear being identified could threaten their current jobs and their ability to work in the auto industry in the future. Information the insiders provided in separate interviews was consistent with each others’ accounts and with internal Ford documents and emails the Free Press obtained during its investigation.
Some of the engineers and product designers say they agreed to talk because spouses and religious advisers suggested it might help ease feelings of guilt and their worry about the safety of drivers today.
"I told one friend if he loved his stepdaughter, he'd get her out of that Fiesta as quick as possible," one of the company's mechanical experts said on Nov. 25. "I wouldn't put my kid in one of those cars."
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