Faulty Tires Replacing Firestone Tires

W A S H I N G T O N, June 18 -- Some people taking advantage of Ford MotorCo.'s recall of Firestone tires may be driving away on differentbrands with higher failure rates, the spokesman for a committeeinvestigating Firestone tires said today.

Meanwhile, federal investigators increased the death toll fromaccidents involving Firestone tires from 174 to 203.

House Commerce Committee spokesman Ken Johnson saidcongressional investigators will reveal the results of theiranalysis into the failure rates of several tire brands during ahearing Tuesday. Johnson said the analysis would show that some ofthe replacement tires Ford is using fail more often than some ofFirestone's Wilderness AT tires.

The Wilderness AT has been at the center of a nearly yearlongdebate over the safety of Firestone tires. Bridgestone/FirestoneInc.'s voluntary recall of 6.5 million tires last August includedthe 15-inch version of the Wilderness AT, made at its plant inDecatur, Ill.

The company insisted that other sizes of the tire made at otherplants were safe. But last month Ford said it was concerned aboutthe safety of other sizes and announced it would replace all 13million Wilderness ATs still on its vehicles.

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Ford is working with Goodyear, Continental and Michelin to getreplacements. Johnson would not specify which of those tires hadhigher failure rates than the Wilderness AT, but said it would bedisclosed at the hearing.

"After carefully analyzing thousands of pages of documents,it's now clear to us that Ford in some cases is replacing Firestonetires with brands that actually have higher claims rates," Johnsonsaid. "Why? Frankly, we don't have a good answer."

The Commerce Committee has been collecting information for thepast several months on the number of claims for property damagefiled against several major tire makers.

Ford does not have the same information because tire makers keepclaims rates confidential. But Ford officials said they asked theNational Highway Traffic Safety Administration about thereplacement tires they planned to use and the agency did not raiseany safety concerns.