In the past ford quality hasn't been great but in the last decade I think they're doing pretty good. My Z28 had all kinds of problems but my Mach has been pretty much trouble free since I bought it.
Yeah, I think part of the bad rep comes from the early 90's when everyone made such a big deal about the Japanese and how they were doing everything right economically and we were in the middle of a recession. They were huge competition in the auto market. I dunno, I've always figured that any car's gonna be pretty reliable if you take care of it.