That may mean that he has recourse with the person or dealer that he bought the car from for lack of disclosure or even the dealer that did the prior repairs. ESP may or may not step up to that.
But I agree, that may be part of his defense. Sometimes Ford will step up rather than force the customer to duke it out with with another dealer.
If you can, you really want to try to get the dealership on your side if at all possible in such cases. If the service manager can tell the factory rep that this had to be out of the customer's control because of prior repair history and he did buy an extended warranty the rep just might step up.
I don't know enough about all the details here to help much more. Also things may have changed in the last few months. It has been nearly a year since I left a Ford dealership.
