2008 Ford Escape2nd gen (2008–2012), first year

Updated 2026-08-29NHTSA counts read on this date — 2416 complaints. They rise over time.

Half the 2008 Ford Escape’s Complaints Are Steering. Three Quarters of the Brake Complaints Are Hybrids.

The 2008 Escape is the first year of the second generation — a reskin of the boxy 2001 car rather than a new one underneath. It is also the year the steering complaints peak, and they stay the largest category for the rest of the generation.

Owners have filed 2,416 complaints with NHTSA about the 2008 model year. Ford sold 165,596 Escapes in calendar 2007 and 156,544 in 2008, and the 2008 model year went out across both years, so the denominator is in the hundreds of thousands. I am not turning that into a rate. A model year does not line up with a calendar year, and 2,416 filings are not 2,416 owners. What the number is good for is comparison with the other model years in this series, counted the same way.

The basics

Three engines, and 2008 is the last year for all three of them. A 2.3-liter four, a 3.0-liter V6, and the Escape Hybrid, which pairs a 2.3-liter Atkinson-cycle four with an electric motor and a CVT. From 2009 the four-cylinder cars move to a 2.5-liter and the V6 gains output.

That matters below, because the hybrid is a different car in the places that generate complaints. It stops with regenerative braking. It has its own coolant pump for the hybrid electronics. Neither part exists on the other two.

Specs

Horsepower and displacement are from NHTSA’s vPIC catalog, which holds what the manufacturer submitted. Fuel economy is EPA.

The hybrid is the only one where the city number beats the highway number, and by four.

What owners filed

Sections below are sorted by count and each complaint is counted once. They add up to 2,231. The remaining 185 are spread thin — NHTSA tagged 28 of them structure, 24 unknown or other, 23 air bags, 23 visibility, 21 tires, 19 fuel or propulsion, and 18 suspension.

Engine identification comes from decoding the VIN attached to each filing. 2,047 of the 2,416 decode to one of the three: hybrid 25.2 percent, 2.3L 27.5 percent, V6 47.3 percent. The sections below are read against those shares.

This is not a failure rate by engine. Nothing here divides failures by how many of each engine Ford built, because the complaint record does not contain that. It compares each engine’s share of one section against its share of the whole record, and a car whose engine draws more complaints of every kind would move both numbers together.

Steering — 1,245

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged steering, plus those that name the power steering or the steering assist.

This is 52 percent of everything filed on the car. The 2009 car is right behind it at 50 percent, and from the 2010 on it never passes a third again.

The shape is consistent. The assist goes away, usually while the car is moving, and the wheel gets heavy. 132 filings use the words “lost” or “loss of” with steering.

From ODI 11575798:

“Power steering was lost randomly during driving. Before completely going out the steering wheel starting vibrating uncontrollably. Later, the Loss of Electric Power Steering Assist message appeared on dash memo.”

From ODI 11444820:

“Vehicle lost electric steering assistance system while driving causing a crash in a street curve. This system problem is now intermittent. The Ford dealer told there is nothing they can do if I don’t pay for the repair. I think this is a secury issue and Ford is responsible for it.”

The hybrid is 14 percent of this section against 25.2 percent of the record — the one place where it is under-represented rather than over.

Brakes — 284

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged service brakes, plus those that name regenerative braking.

185 of these are hybrids. That is 73 percent of the section against 25.2 percent of the record.

It is also the only year in this generation where brakes are a large category at all. Counted the same way, the 2009 car has 95 and every year after that is under 60.

The word that separates them is “regen.” 101 filings on this model year use it, 91 of them on cars that decode to the hybrid and not one on a car that decodes to the 2.3L or the V6. The dash message “stop safely now” behaves the same way: 76 filings, 64 hybrids, zero gas cars.

From ODI 11321711:

“WHEN RUNNING THE CAR (STATIONARY, AND THEN MOVING), ABS LIGHT CAME ON, THE BRAKE LIGHT CAME ON, AND IT SAID “REGEN BRAKES DISABLED”. ATTEMPTING TO DRIVE THE CAR, THE BRAKES SEEMED TO WORK MOST OF THE TIME, BUT WERE MORE DIFFICULT TO DEPRESS SOMETIMES. AFTER TAKING IT TO A MECHANIC, WE WERE INFORMED THAT THE HYDRAULIC CONTROL UNIT WAS FAULTY AND NEEDED TO BE REPLACED.”

That last part repeats. 74 filings name the hydraulic control unit or the HCU, and 64 of those are hybrids.

From ODI 11218584:

“DRIVING AT 35MPH ABS LIGHT CAME ON THEN CHECK BRAKES FOLLOWED BY BRAKE REGEN DISENGAGED. THIS CREATED NO STOPPING OF VEHICLE AND RUNNING THROUGH STOP LIGHT. FORTUNATELY, THERE WERE NO VEHICLES COMING FROM OTHER DIRECTIONS. STILL NO BRAKES AND APPEARS TO BE A KNOWN ISSUE BY PUBLIC AND FORD.”

There is no recall for this.

Transmission — 284

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged power train, plus those that name the transmission, the shift cable or the shift lever.

The four-speed automatic in the gas cars, and it tracks the gas cars: 86 percent of this section decodes to the 2.3L or the V6 against 74.8 percent of the record.

Throttle and stalling — 247

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged vehicle speed control, plus those that name the throttle body, the wrench light or limp mode.

The electronic throttle body. Counted this way it is 10 percent of the 2008 record, the smallest share of any year in this generation — the 2010 car runs 44 percent and the story there is this one. 76 filings name the throttle body here.

Engine and cooling — 112

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged engine or engine and engine cooling, plus those that name the coolant or overheating.

Small, and skewed the same way the brakes are: 66 of the 89 that decode are hybrids, 74 percent against 25.2 percent of the record.

This one has a recall behind it. 14V526000 covers the hybrid’s Motor Electronics Coolant pump, and Ford’s stated consequence is that the hybrid electronics overheat and shut the powertrain down.

From ODI 11329798:

“I FOUND MY FORD ESCAPE HYBRID 2008. ENGINE STALLED WHILE DRIVING. IT SHOT DOWN AND I HAVE TO PULL OVER AND RESTART THE ENGINE. I HAVE RESEARCH INTERNET AND FOUND THAT SAME FORD ESCAPE MODEL FROM 2003- 2008 ISSUE. HOWEVER, WHEN I RUN MY VIN DOES NOT APPEAR IT HAS RECALL. ITS SUPPOSE TO HAVE FORD RECALL 14S19. *TR”

14S19 is Ford’s number for that campaign. 22 filings on this model year name either it or the NHTSA number.

Electrical — 59

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged electrical system.

The rest is thin

185 filings, none of them forming a pattern. The largest groups are 28 that NHTSA tagged structure, 24 unknown or other, and 23 air bags.

Recalls

Look this car up at nhtsa.gov/recalls and five campaigns come back. Three of them are Ford recalling the vehicle. The other two are parts suppliers recalling service parts that could end up on it — 15E045000, Timken aftermarket front wheel bearings sold as service parts for 2001–2012 Escapes, and 10E043000, Marathon aftermarket seat covers sold for a long list of vehicles. Whether either reaches a given car depends on what was installed on it, not on how it was built.

The three Ford campaigns, against 2,416 filings:

14V284000 — the steering. Reported May 2014, covering 2008–2011 Escape and Mercury Mariner built August 18, 2006 through September 11, 2010. Ford’s summary says the torque sensor “may not be able to properly detect driver steering input” and that “the system could remove the Electric Power Steering (EPS) assist.”

The remedy is worth reading in full, because it is not a part replacement:

“dealers will update the software for the power steering control module (PSCM) and the instrument cluster module, free of charge. If a vehicle shows a history of a loss of the torque sensor signal or fault codes relating to the PSCM when the vehicle is brought in for the recall remedy, the affected components will be replaced, free of charge.”

A software update, with hardware only if the car has already logged the fault. The recall began July 18, 2014.

14V526000 — the hybrid coolant pump, reported September 2014, covering 2005–2008 Escape hybrids built October 13, 2003 through June 20, 2008. Dealers replace the original Motor Electronics Coolant pump with a brushless one. Ford’s number is 14S19.

15V606000 — reported September 2015, and it does not cover the car as it left the factory. It covers 2001–2008 Escapes whose CD4E transmission was replaced with a remanufactured unit rebuilt between June 11 and July 15, 2015. The shift lever bolt may not be tight, and Ford’s stated consequence includes the gear selection indicator showing PARK when the transmission is not in PARK.

96 filings say the VIN was not included in a recall the owner had read about. Counted as filings where “VIN” and a phrase like “was not included” — or covered, or listed — fall in the same sentence.

What doesn’t show up in the complaints

NHTSA rated this car twice, and the ratings are not identical. The early-release 2008 Escape scored three stars for the driver in the frontal test; the later release scored four. Both scored five stars on side impact for both seating positions and three on rollover, with a 20.4 percent rollover probability. NHTSA did not publish an overall star rating for this model year.

Nothing in the record says the crash performance is a problem. Air bags account for 23 of the 185 filings left over above, and seat belts for three.

The 2.3-liter with the five-speed manual is the fuel-economy leader among the gas cars at 22/28/24, and no filing on this page is about the manual transmission.

What the complaint curve says

2010  112     2014  372  ← recall year
2011  125     2015  207
2012  146     2016  230
2013  230     2017  198
              2018  244

The peak is 2014, and both of this car’s Ford recalls landed in 2014 — the steering in July, the hybrid pump in September. A complaint count going up can mean a recall letter arrived rather than that a car got worse. On this model year that is not a footnote, it is the shape of the curve.

Filings kept arriving after that. 2018 is the second-highest year, ten years into the car’s life, and the hybrid share of each year rises rather than falls: 20 of 112 in 2010, 58 of 244 in 2018.

Complaint databases collect complaints. Nobody files to say the steering worked. Rates are not comparable across models without running the same arithmetic on each. What this data supports is the ranking inside this car, and the engine split inside that ranking.

If you’re looking at one

Ordered by what it costs you if it goes wrong, not by how many people filed.

If it is a hybrid, drive it somewhere you can brake repeatedly and watch the dash. The filings describe an ABS light, a “regen brakes disabled” message, and a pedal that gets harder or goes soft — in that order, not always at once. A hybrid that shows any of the three has the thing 185 filings describe. The repair owners name is the hydraulic control unit, and it is not covered by a recall.

Ask whether recall 14V284000 has been completed, and ask what the dealer actually did. The remedy is a software update unless the car had already logged a torque-sensor fault. A completed recall on this campaign does not mean the steering hardware was replaced.

On a hybrid, ask about 14V526000 too. That is the coolant pump for the hybrid electronics, and Ford’s consequence is a powertrain shutdown while driving.

Drive it at low speed and turn the wheel lock to lock. 132 filings describe the assist going away; some describe it as intermittent. A car that steers normally on a test drive has not been cleared, but a car that is heavy or notchy on the lot has told you something.

If a remanufactured transmission was installed, find the paperwork. 15V606000 only reaches units rebuilt in a five-week window in 2015, so this is a question about the repair history, not about the car.

Numbers worth writing down

The 2009 car is next, and the steering is still the largest category while the throttle complaints begin their climb.

Sources

• NHTSA complaint database — 2,416 complaints for the 2008 Escape, quoted above by ODI number
• NHTSA recall API — three campaigns, quoted from the campaign summaries and remedy text
• NHTSA vPIC — engine and horsepower, decoded from the VIN attached to each filing
• NHTSA safety ratings — early and later release, 2008 Ford Escape
• EPA fuel economy — city / highway / combined
• GoodCarBadCar Ford Escape sales figures

Complaint counts and quotes come from NHTSA’s public database, retrieved 2026-08-29; each quote lists its ODI number so you can look it up. Engine identification comes from decoding the VIN attached to each filing — 2,047 of the 2,416 decode. Recall applicability depends on the VIN — check yours at nhtsa.gov/recalls. This summarizes what owners reported. It isn’t buying or repair advice.