PulsCar analysis of NHTSA public data, September 2026
Ford Escape: what 19,582 owner complaints, 85 recall campaigns and Ford's
own coolant-intrusion bulletins say
Licensed CC BY 4.0. Queries run 18 September 2026.

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SOURCE FILES
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NHTSA ODI complaint flat files COMPLAINTS_RECEIVED_2015-2019, _2020-2024,
  _2025-2026
  https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/ffdd/cmpl/  (field dictionary: CMPL.txt)
  777,040 distinct vehicle complaints (ODINO, product type V) received
  1 January 2015 to 8 September 2026. Of those, 19,582 name
  MAKE = FORD and MODEL = ESCAPE.
  SCOPE NOTE: the flat file treats each drivetrain as its own model.
  ESCAPE HYBRID (1,118 complaints), ESCAPE PHEV (123) and ESCAPE HEV (13)
  are NOT inside the 19,582. Where the article discusses the hybrid it says
  so and uses the recall documents plus those separate counts.
NHTSA recall flat file FLAT_RCL.zip. Campaign details for 22V-413, 22V-859,
  25V-467, 14V-284 and 26V-117 were re-read live on 18 September 2026 from
  https://api.nhtsa.gov/recalls/campaignNumber?campaignNumber=<campaign>
NHTSA manufacturer communication flat files TSBS_RECEIVED_2015-2019,
  _2020-2024, _2025-2026
  https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/ffdd/tsbs/  (field dictionary: TSBS.txt)
NHTSA investigation flat file FLAT_INV.zip.

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A MEASUREMENT PROBLEM THAT HAD TO BE FIXED FIRST
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NHTSA changed how it stores complaint narratives during 2021. Measured
share of narratives that are entirely upper case, by year received:
  2015-2020 about 100%; 2021 44.1%; 2022 2.1%; 2023 1.5%; 2024 1.0%;
  2025 1.0%; 2026 0.8%.
A keyword regex written in upper case and matched case-sensitively returns
a plausible-looking number that silently excludes almost every complaint
filed after mid-2021 — which on this vehicle would have deleted 1,400 of
the 1,434 coolant-intrusion complaints, because nearly all of them arrived
from 2023 onwards. EVERY query below is case-insensitive.

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COMPONENT COUNTS
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NHTSA's COMPONENTS field holds one or more component names separated by
" | ". A complaint counts once for each distinct family it names, so the
families sum to more than 19,582.
  ENGINE 5,941 (30.3%)          STEERING 3,165 (16.2%)
  POWER TRAIN 2,844 (14.5%)     UNKNOWN OR OTHER 1,962 (10.0%)
  ELECTRICAL SYSTEM 1,626 (8.3%) ENGINE AND ENGINE COOLING 1,362 (7.0%)
  STRUCTURE:BODY 1,342 (6.9%)   FUEL/PROPULSION SYSTEM 1,245 (6.4%)
  SERVICE BRAKES 671 (3.4%)     SUSPENSION 627 (3.2%)
3,202 complaints contain the string "STEERING" in any component field.

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THE COOLANT-INTRUSION SET (1,434)
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Membership: the narrative contains, case-insensitive, either the phrase
"coolant intrusion" or the code "p0316". Nothing else. These are two of the
most specific strings in the whole complaint file — one is Ford's own term
for the defect and the other is a diagnostic trouble code — which is why no
broader query was used.
  A looser query (adding coolant loss, losing coolant, coolant level
  dropping, no external leak, cracked head, coolant into a cylinder)
  returns 2,124. It is NOT used for any number in the article, because it
  pulls in ordinary external leaks.
SAMPLE READING
  Thirty matches drawn at random (seed 1234) were read in full. All 30 were
  genuine coolant-intrusion or startup-misfire reports on this vehicle.
  Zero mis-sorts in 30 puts the upper bound on the false-positive rate at
  roughly 10% at 95% confidence (the rule of three); it does not mean the
  rate is zero. What the query misses is any owner who describes an engine
  failure without naming the term or the code, so 1,434 is a floor.
BY MODEL YEAR: 2013 = 14, 2014 = 54, 2015 = 32, 2016 = 35, 2017 = 647,
  2018 = 516, 2019 = 129, 2020 = 2, and one or two each in 2022-2025.
  2017-2019 is 1,292 of 1,434, 90.1% of the set.
BY YEAR RECEIVED: zero in 2015-2018, 1 in 2019, 6 in 2020, 4 in 2021,
  23 in 2022, 143 in 2023, 448 in 2024, 515 in 2025, 294 to 8 September
  2026. As a share of ALL Escape complaints filed that year: 6.4% in 2023,
  17.5% in 2024, 20.7% in 2025, 18.6% in 2026.
MILEAGE: 636 of the 1,434 report a usable mileage (0 < miles < 400,000).
  Median 84,487; first quartile 64,733; third quartile 107,300;
  4.1% at or under 36,000 miles.
  All Escape complaints: 11,046 usable mileages, median 88,000.
  All-complaint baseline: 392,935 usable mileages, median 70,000.
  The median of 84,487 sits within 500 miles of the 84,000-mile limit in
  Ford Customer Satisfaction Program 21N12. That is an observation about
  where the complaints land, not a claim that any particular owner was
  refused; eligibility also depends on build date and on 7 years from the
  warranty start date.
TOWED / CRASH / FIRE: coolant set towed 9.34%, crash 0.07%, fire 0.14%,
  1 injury, 0 deaths. All Escape complaints: towed 6.59%, crash 2.25%,
  fire 1.54%. All-complaint baseline: towed 5.11%, crash 4.37%, fire 1.82%.
PHRASE SHARES inside the 1,434 (full narrative, case-insensitive) are in
  coolant-intrusion-what-owners-report.csv. Categories overlap.
OWNER-REPORTED DOLLAR FIGURES: every $N with 200 <= N <= 40,000 in the set.
  218 figures inside 167 of the 1,434 complaints. Median $9,000; first
  quartile $7,200; third quartile $11,000; largest $20,000; 83.9% are
  $5,000 or more. THIS IS NOT A PRICE. Owners who write a number are the
  ones who were quoted one, a single complaint can contribute a quote and
  an invoice, and an engine quote is exactly the kind of number that
  prompts a federal complaint in the first place. It is published as the
  measured shape of the worst outcome, not as what this repair costs.

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STEERING
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3,202 complaints name a steering component. By model year the mass sits on
2008-2011 (737, 729, 390, 386 = 2,242, 70.0% of the set), which is exactly
the range of recall 14V-284. 2012 adds 130 and 2013 adds 291; those model
years are outside that campaign. NHTSA defect petition DP15-001, "Loss of
power steering while driving", was opened 1 April 2015 and closed 14 June
2018. Complaint counts alone cannot say whether a vehicle outside a
campaign has the same defect, and this analysis does not claim that; it
reports where the complaints are.

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RECALLS
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85 distinct campaigns name the Ford Escape, covering 21,263,802
potentially affected vehicles summed once per campaign. THAT TOTAL IS NOT
AN ESCAPE NUMBER: NHTSA publishes one population per campaign across every
make and model in it, and these campaigns routinely cover several Ford and
Lincoln nameplates. No per-model split exists.
Movement of complaint counts around a campaign is descriptive only. A
recall changes complaint counts for at least three reasons that cannot be
separated here: the remedy works, owners stop filing because the problem is
now official, and publicity briefly makes owners file more.

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BULLETINS READ
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Quoted words come from NHTSA's summary record of the manufacturer
communication, which is NHTSA's own paraphrase, except where the article
links a scanned PDF. Document IDs, all read on 18 September 2026:
  10137115  SSM 47204, 21 May 2018 — 2015-2018 Escape and siblings with the
      2.0L EcoBoost, rough running with P0300-P0304 and/or P0316 "due to
      coolant intrusion due to corrosion on the engine block", with the
      20 psi / 5 hour / 4 psi pressure test and "replace the engine long
      block assembly".
  10162062  TSB 19-2172, 3 Jul 2019 — same engine family, coolant intrusion
      into the cylinder, long block replacement.
  10162071 / 10169807 / 10210391 / 10214126  TSB 19-2208, 19-2346, 22-2133,
      22-2229 — the same 2.0L EcoBoost coolant-intrusion family through
      June 2022.
  10168739 / 10169884 / 10174400 / 10218621  TSB 19-2139, 19-2375, 20-2100,
      22-2322 — the 1.5L EcoBoost family, "replace the short block and head
      gasket".
  10213732  Ford Customer Satisfaction Program 21N12, 10 Jun 2022, 1.5L
      GTDI short block replacement after coolant intrusion.
  10213728  19B37 Supplement #4, 10 Jun 2022, PCM reprogramming.
  10241546  TSB 23-2275, 1 Sep 2023 — 2023 Escape 2.0L EcoBoost, P0300
      and/or P0316, "may be due to the software in the powertrain control
      module", remedy is a PCM reprogram.
  11012855 / 11014428  SSM 53293 (15 Jan 2025) and SSM 53417 (24 Feb 2025)
      — 2024-2025 Escape 1.5L EcoBoost with "only" P0300 and P0316.
  11016933  TSB 25-2133, 9 Apr 2025 — 2023-2025 Escape and 2025 Bronco
      Sport, P0300 and P0316 "after initial engine start up following an
      overnight cold soak".
IMPORTANT: the 2023-2025 bulletins name the same code, not the same cause.
Where Ford states a cause for those years it is PCM software. Nothing in
this analysis says the 2023-2025 cars have coolant intrusion.

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INVESTIGATIONS
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DP15-001  opened 1 Apr 2015, closed 14 Jun 2018, "Loss of power steering
          while driving"
PE18-007  opened 16 Jul 2018, closed 27 Dec 2024, "Loss of Motive Power",
          2013 Escape
RQ24-008  opened 11 Apr 2024, closed 30 Oct 2025, "Underhood fires caused
          by fuel leak" — the action number carried by recall 25V-467
EA10-002  opened 14 Jan 2010, closed 29 Feb 2012, "Engine Compartment Fire"
PE13-003  opened 21 Feb 2013, closed 28 Feb 2014, "Electronic Throttle Body
          Malfunction"
RQ19-005  opened 19 Dec 2019, closed 7 Feb 2022, "Door Latch Failures"

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LIMITATIONS -- READ BEFORE QUOTING ANY NUMBER
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1. Complaints are self-reported, unverified and voluntary. They are not
   failure rates and cannot be turned into one, because NHTSA publishes no
   denominator.
2. Counts follow attention. Coolant intrusion has a Ford program number, a
   class action and heavy coverage, all of which teach owners the phrase
   they then type into a complaint form. Part of the 2023-2026 rise is
   vocabulary, not only failures.
3. The complaint file records no engine code. It cannot tell a 1.5L Escape
   from a 2.0L one, so every engine-specific statement in the article rests
   on a Ford document, never on these counts.
4. Mileage, towed, crash and fire are the owner's own entries. The towed
   share of any complaint set is inflated relative to the real world.
5. Model year in the complaint file is the owner's entry and is sometimes
   wrong; two complaints carry model year 9999.

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FILES
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coolant-intrusion-by-model-year.csv
  model_year, escape_complaints, coolant_intrusion_or_p0316,
  pct_of_that_year, mileages_reported, median_miles.
coolant-intrusion-by-filing-year.csv
  year_complaint_received, escape_complaints, coolant_intrusion_or_p0316,
  pct.
coolant-intrusion-what-owners-report.csv
  phrase_family, complaints_of_1434, pct.
steering-complaints-by-model-year.csv
  model_year, escape_complaints, steering_component_complaints, pct,
  covered_by_recall_14V-284.
recall-campaigns.csv
  campaign, report_date, component, potentially_affected_whole_campaign,
  escape_model_years, consequence.

No personal data is published: no VIN, no city, no dealer name, no owner
free text beyond short quoted snippets in the article itself.