NHTSA Complaint #11676359 — 2016 FORD FUSION

The shifter cable bushing failed after being replaced under recall 7 years ago. When leaving a parking spot and trying to shift into drive my shift lever started to move freely and my digital PRNDL display was all white letters (usually the selected gear is lit up orange). No warnings displayed on my dash. I sensed something was wrong so I applied the parking brake and shut off the engine. I’m thankful this happened when I was leaving a parking spot and not when I was parking my car and getting out (potentially causing the car to roll away with my kids running behind the car on my hilly driveway). This is a known problem that Ford has issued multiple recalls for in the past. My car was covered by one early recall in 2018 (I will upload the Carfax service history showing date and mileage of 2018 recall repair). An orange plastic shifter bushing was installed under recall in 2018. This bushing disintegrated eventually, leading to the problem I experienced a few days ago. I will upload pictures of the orange plastic debris scattered on top of my transmission. (these pictures include a temporary repair that was made after the failure occurred- shifter was reattached with zip ties in order to reposition the vehicle for service). Ford has since developed updated repair parts (a yellow plastic bushing and a plastic cover to keep contaminants off the bushing) for later recalls that affected different trims/configurations of the Fusion. I had to go to the dealer and buy those updated parts myself, which I installed so that I could continue driving my car to work (I will include pictures of repairs). I feel like Ford should be upgrading the earlier recalled vehicles with these latest and greatest parts. My car was fixed under recall and then experienced the very failure the recall was supposed to address. My car has about 245,000 miles on it. The initial recall repair was performed at about 88,000 miles. After about 7 years and 156,000 miles the recall repair failed.