Washington - Ford chief executive Mr Jac Nasser yesterday mounted a vigorous defence of his company's response to defective tyre reports, insisting that tyre-maker Firestone had been to blame for any delay in warning the public.
"At every turn, whether it was in the United States or elsewhere, we tried to get to the bottom of the defects," Mr Nasser told a Congressional panel investigating the August 9th recall of 6.5 million Firestone tyres in the US.
The tyres, widely used on Ford's popular Explorer sport utility vehicle but reportedly prone to tread separation at high speeds, have been linked by US safety regulators to dozens of accidents and the deaths of 88 people.
Because tyres are not warranted by the vehicle manufacturer, he told lawmakers, Ford was not able to know for certain that the suspect tyres were defective "until we virtually pried the data out of Firestone's hands and analysed it ourselves".