September 28, 2005
In a letter to companies that convert Town Cars into limousines, Ford Motor Co. has offered to provide a retrofit that may keep the vehicles from catching fire in rear end collisions.
The kit, which Ford is offering at no cost, helps protect the vehicle's gas tank from being punctured when rear-ended.
The kit contains the same parts Ford began installing in the Crown Victoria Police Interceptors in October 2003, after several police officers died in fuel-fed fires in the vehicles. The Town Car is built on the same platform as the Crown Victoria and the Mercury Marquis.
The Ford decision to provide the kits comes before a lawsuit against the company in the deaths of three sisters is set to go to trial early next year in Davie County, N.C.
The young women, all sisters, were returning home from a concert in 2003 when a truck barreled into their Town Car and it caught fire. Autopsies showed they burned to death.
Ford has installed the kits on just under 300,000 Crown Victoria police cars already on the road, and an additional 100,000 kits have been installed on the assembly line.
Ford Motor has made the kit available to owners of non-police models for the last couple of years, but it charges for the parts and installation.
