NHTSA Complaint #11611578 — 2017 FORD FUSION

While driving my Ford Fusion on the highway at a constant speed of 65 mph, a service light appeared on the dashboard, and the car suddenly lost power to the wheels even though the engine was still running. Fortunately, I was able to pull over to the side of the road safely since there wasn't much traffic at the time. However, had this been a busy road, it could have caused a major accident. I turned off the car and restarted it. However, the problem still persisted, and the car would not shift gears (it has an automatic transmission with a center console shifter dial). I had my car towed to my Ford dealer, and they determined that the transmission had failed. The Ford service manager stated that the transmissions on this particular era Ford Fusion were poorly designed and that many of their customers needed to replace their transmissions on this model as well as several models of the Ford Explorer from the same time period. The vehicle ran perfectly fine for many years previously. Just before the transmission failed (perhaps about 20-50 miles worth of driving before it failed), I had experience several instances of the car having trouble shift out of neutral into drive and reverse, often with a delay in shifting and a slight jolt, which was barely noticeable, when it did shift. I had brought the car to the dealer, and they weren't able to find any problems and said that it worked fine. There were no error codes generated to indicate that there was a problem either. My vehicle is only a little over 5000 miles beyond its 60,000 mile warranty, and the service manager stated that he tells owners that owners "are lucky if they their car makes it to 70,000 miles before the transmission fails". Given that there were few symptoms (which I believe would go unnoticed by most drivers) of a potential failure, the sudden loss of power to the wheels, and that this is a known common issue by Ford, this is major safety issue that must be addressed.