Ford Auto Defects: The New York Times, "In Door Safety Cases, Ford Settles and a Mother Struggles"

          Internal company records produced in response to the lawsuits showed that Ford had ordered and installed substandard door handle springs on up to 4.1 million F-Series trucks and Expedition and Lincoln Navigator S.U.V.'s from the model years 1997 to 2000, but decided against ordering a recall or reporting it to the federal government. The springs have been cited in at least six liability lawsuits involving deaths and serious injuries, lawyers say.
          Joan Claybrook, president of the advocacy group Public Citizen and a former administrator of the safety agency, said, "It appears to me to be a safety defect that they were required to report to NHTSA."
          According to Ford documents that emerged in the Seliner lawsuit and others, the issue goes back to 1997 when Transport Canada, the Canadian vehicle safety agency, informed Ford that a 20-mile-an-hour impact test on a Ford F-150 pickup produced an unexpected result: "During the impact, the passenger's door was flung open.