2009 Ford Escape2nd gen (2008–2012), second year

Updated 2026-08-29NHTSA counts read on this date — 1692 complaints. They rise over time.

The 2009 Ford Escape Has One Recall. The Thing 427 Filings Describe Is Not in It.

Ford recalled the 2009 Escape once. That campaign is the electric power steering, it covers 2008 through 2011, and it reaches the largest category in this car’s complaint record.

The second-largest category is the throttle, and nothing recalls it.

Owners have filed 1,692 complaints with NHTSA about the 2009 model year. Ford sold 156,544 Escapes in calendar 2008 and 173,044 in 2009, and the 2009 model year sold across both, so the denominator is in the hundreds of thousands. That is not a rate — 1,692 filings are not 1,692 owners — and the count earns its keep only because the other years in this series are counted the same way.

The basics

The 2009 is the second year of the second-generation Escape and the year the drivetrain changes underneath a body that does not. The 2.3-liter four becomes a 2.5, the 3.0-liter V6 goes from 200 horsepower to 240, and both move from a four-speed automatic to a six-speed. The hybrid moves to the 2.5-liter as well.

That last change matters for what you can read out of this page. On the 2008 car the hybrid decodes separately from the gas four and carries its own story. From 2009 the hybrid and the gas four share an engine, so the VIN does not separate them. Ten filings say the word “hybrid,” which is not enough to build anything on.

Specs

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

What owners filed

Sections below are sorted by count and each complaint is counted once. They add up to 1,586. The remaining 106 are spread thin — NHTSA tagged 19 of them structure, 19 unknown or other, 18 fuel or propulsion, and nine air bags.

Engine identification comes from decoding the VIN attached to each filing. 1,484 of the 1,692 decode to the V6 or the 2.5-liter four: V6 62.8 percent, 2.5L 37.2 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. On this model year the split is also weak. The furthest any section leans off the baseline is eleven points: the throttle and the engine section both run 74 percent V6. The 2008 car had a section that leaned forty-eight. The honest reading is that the engine does not sort this car’s complaints.

Steering — 843

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

Half the record, and the same failure as the year before: the assist goes away and the wheel gets heavy. 87 filings use “lost” or “loss of” with steering.

From ODI 10557613:

“I WAS DRIVING DOWN THE FREEWAY FROM ALBUQUERQUE TO LAS CRUCES WHEN MY STEERING BECAME ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO TURN THE WHEEL. I QUICKLY PULLED OFF THE FREEWAY AND CALLED MY BOYFRIEND TO ASK HIM WHAT TO DO. HE SAID RESTART YOUR CAR SEE IF THAT RESETS IT. IT DID WORK. THEN LATER I PARKED AND THE STEERING WHEEL JUST STARTED SHAKING VIGOROUSLY. THIS HAS HAPPENED SIX MORE TIMES SINCE THEN RANGING FROM SPEEDS OF 20 TO 75 MILES AND HOUR.”

That one was filed in December 2013, five months before Ford reported the recall. This is the one category with a recall behind it, and 171 filings name that campaign by its NHTSA number.

Throttle — 427

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

Counted the same way, the 2008 has 247 and this one has 427 — 25 percent of its record against 10 percent of the older car’s. That gap is the whole difference between the two years.

The shape is specific enough that owners diagnose it themselves. A wrench light appears on the dash, the car drops into reduced power, and it drives again after a restart. 286 filings name the throttle body, 119 name the wrench light, and 27 name limp mode.

From ODI 11266729:

“HIGHWAY SPEEDS. WRENCH LIGHT COMES ON AND VEHICLE LOSES ALL POWER/THROTTLE RESPONSE. PULL OFF ROAD, PUT VEHICLE IN PARK, RESTART AND COMPUTER SEEMS TO RESET. HAD BEEN 1-2 TIMES PER YEAR OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS AND STRUGGLED TO DIAGNOSE PROBLEM. HAPPENED 8 TIMES IN 150 MILE TRIP TODAY.”

What owners say Ford did about it

Nine filings name a Ford customer satisfaction program, 13N03, by number. They describe it consistently, and none of them describes a recall.

From ODI 10586465:

“FORD CLAIMS THEY HAVE A CUSTOMER SATISFACTION PROGRAM (13N03) TO ADDRESS PROBLEMS WITH THE ENGINE THROTTLE BODY AND THAT CUSTOMERS WHO COME INTO DEALERSHIPS WILL BE ABLE TO HAVE THE POWERTRAIN CONTROL MODULE SOFTWARE REPROGRAMMED TO PROTECT THE THROTTLE BODY. THE PROBLEM IS- FORD WILL NOT HONOR THIS PROGRAM UNLESS THE ERROR SHOWS ON THEIR DIAGNOSIS COMPUTER.”

From ODI 11115584:

“THIS HAPPENED TWICE IN A WEEK. THE TROUBLE CODE SHOWS P2112. DEALER SAYS THAT MY VIN IS NOT COVERED BY THE CONSUMER SATISFACTION PROGRAM 13N03, BUT I HAVE EXPERIENCED THE SAME PROBLEM. DEALER SAYS ETB MUST BE REPLACED. I WILL HAVE TO PAY FOR IT.”

Two things separate a customer satisfaction program from a recall, and both are in those filings. A recall has no mileage or time limit and NHTSA publishes it; a program is Ford’s own and can end. The owners here describe a condition on top of that. The fault has to be present on the dealer’s computer while the car is in the bay, which is hard to arrange for a failure that clears on a restart.

13N03 does not appear in NHTSA’s recall database. Everything above about it comes from the filings themselves.

Transmission — 119

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

Down from 284 on the 2008 car, and this is the year the six-speed replaces the four-speed.

Brakes — 95

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

A third of what the 2008 car has. That car’s brake section is 284 filings and three quarters of them decode to the hybrid; this one has no comparable group, because the 2009 hybrid does not decode separately.

Engine — 76

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

Electrical — 26

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged electrical system.

The rest is thin

106 filings, none of them forming a pattern. The largest groups are 19 that NHTSA tagged structure, 19 unknown or other, and 18 fuel or propulsion.

Recalls

Look this car up at nhtsa.gov/recalls and three campaigns come back. One of them is 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. Whether either reaches a given car depends on what was installed on it.

14V284000 — the steering, and the only Ford campaign on this model year. 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 a software update rather than a part:

“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.”

One Ford campaign against 1,692 filings is the thinnest coverage in this generation. The 2008 car has three, the 2010 three, the 2011 two. The 2012 also has one, but against 598 filings.

What doesn’t show up in the complaints

NHTSA rated the 2009 Escape five stars for both front occupants in the frontal test, and five for both in the side test. Rollover is three stars, a 20.4 percent probability in front-wheel drive and 23.7 in four-wheel drive. That is a better frontal result than the 2008 car, which scored three stars for the driver in its early-release rating and four in its later one.

Nothing in the record says the crash performance is a problem. Air bags are nine of the leftover filings and seat belts are six.

The six-speed automatic arrives this year and the transmission complaints fall by more than half.

What the complaint curve says

2010   41     2014  132     2018  161
2011   24     2015   93     2019  140
2012   44     2016  112     2020  112
2013  439     2017   91

2013 is not a typo. 439 filings arrived that year, more than three times any other, and 305 of them are throttle filings. The throttle section is 427 filings in total, so 71 percent of everything this car has ever drawn about the throttle arrived inside those twelve months, clustered in June through September.

The steering recall came in July 2014, a year later. A complaint count going up can mean a letter arrived rather than that a car got worse — but here the spike precedes the only recall this car has, and lands on the category that recall does not cover.

Complaint databases collect complaints. Nobody files to say the throttle 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 timing behind it.

If you’re looking at one

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

Ask whether the throttle body has been replaced, and get the receipt. This is the thing 427 filings describe and no recall covers. A car that has had the part replaced is in a different position from one that has not. A VIN lookup will not tell you which, because a customer satisfaction program does not show up there.

Drive it long enough to reach highway speed and hold it. The filings describe the wrench light and the drop into reduced power at speed, often on a trip rather than around town. A short loop past the dealership is not the test.

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.

Turn the wheel lock to lock at low speed. 87 filings describe the assist going away. A car that is heavy or notchy on the lot has told you something; a car that feels normal has not been cleared.

Numbers worth writing down

The 2010 car is next, and the throttle becomes the largest category outright.

Sources

• NHTSA complaint database — 1,692 complaints for the 2009 Escape, quoted above by ODI number
• NHTSA recall API — one Ford campaign, quoted from the campaign summary and remedy text
• NHTSA vPIC — engine and horsepower, decoded from the VIN attached to each filing
• NHTSA safety ratings — 2009 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 — 1,484 of the 1,692 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.