Ford Recalls Nearly Half A Million Explorers

Ford has issued another huge safety recall, this time for almost half a million Explorers, but there’s no fix for the problem. That’s right, you might own one of these SUVs where a problem is known, but you’ll have to sit tight for a solution.

GM has trademarked the Panther name for some reason.

A filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reveals that 2016 and 2017 Ford Explorers have problems with the exterior trim on the B-pillars falling off. That’s being blamed on the adhesive and connectors with other pieces failing.

Not only will your Explorer look ugly with the missing B-pillar trim, the piece of plastic constitutes a road hazard for other drivers, which is why it’s a safety issue.  

The automaker is blaming the issue on improper manufacturing techniques it didn’t catch for almost two years. While not every Explorer has the defect, the Blue Oval is erring on the side of caution and recalling 492,145 units.

Explorer owners might see the trim piece starting to pop off the top of the front doors on their vehicle. Or they might just hear wind noise and/or rattling while they’re driving.

What’s crazy is Ford has been working on this issue since 2019. At first it didn’t think the failing trim pieces constituted “an unreasonable risk to safety” but after NHTSA came to the automaker in March 2025 with complaints from dozens of Explorer owners, that’s when it started doing something.

Yet Ford still doesn’t have a fix for the failing trim pieces. The recall notices are about to go out, but you can’t have the problem repaired at a dealership, at least not yet.

We both can and can’t believe we’re covering yet another huge Ford safety recall. While the automaker has expressed anger and frustration with us shining a light on its disproportionate number of recalls lately, we can only imagine how people who own vehicles that have been hit with multiple recalls rapidly must feel.

After all, some of these recalls are overlapping, covering different issues on the same cars, trucks, or SUVs. We personally would be sick of making scheduled visits with our local dealership’s service department where CNN or some other inane program is playing on a huge TV mounted to the wall.

Image via Ford