BREAKING NEWS

NBC News and news services

Updated: 1:48 p.m. ET Jan. 27, 2005

Ford Motor Company — the second-largest U.S. automaker — has announced a voluntary recall of thousands of its popular pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles due to a fire risk, NBC News has learned.

Ford is recalling the vehicles because their cruise control switches could short circuit and start a fire under the hood while parked, the automaker said Thursday.

The recall involves pproximately 792,000 vehicles, including F-150 pickup trucks, Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigator SUVs from the 2000 model year that are equipped with a speed control switch. Also included in the recall are certain F-150 SuperCrew trucks that were built through August 7, 2001 and are equipped with speed control.

One Ford source tells NBC that the recall is “significant.”

According to Ford, vehicle owners have reported that the cruise control on their vehicles has malfunctioned before they shut down the engine. The mechanism that shuts off the speed control may overheat, eventually causing a fire, Ford said

Ford says it knows of 63 alleged vehicle fires and of one alleged injury associated with a fire. No deaths have been reported, but the instances of fires appear to be increasing, the car company said.

Ford will notify owners of the vehicle recall in February, and dealers will deactivate the cruise control switch for free. Once the company has an adequate supply of replacement switches, it will send another letter notifying owners that they can get their switches replaced.

Ford said cruise control will be disabled once the switch is deactivated.

“We recognize this may be an inconvenience, but we believe this preventive action is in the best interest of our customers’ safety,” the company said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into the defect in November after receiving 36 reports of fires. All of the incidents occurred when the vehicle was parked and the ignition was turned off. No injuries were reported.

Ford said it worked closely with NHTSA throughout the investigation.

Ford’s F-Series truck retained the title of best-selling vehicle in the United States last year. The company sold 939,511 F-Series trucks, setting a new industry record for full-size pickup sales. Ford set the previous record with 911,597 in 2001.

Ford’s F-150 is the gem of its F-Series lineup, accounting for roughly 60 percent of the Series' total sales. Ford launched a new version of the F-150 in September 2003. A redesigned Super Duty model of the F-Series hit dealerships in September.