2010 Ford Escape2nd gen (2008–2012), third year

Updated 2026-08-29NHTSA counts read on this date — 2127 complaints. They rise over time.

On the 2010 Ford Escape the Throttle Outgrows the Steering. 721 of Those Filings Arrived in One Year.

Every other second-generation Escape has steering at the top of its complaint record. This one does not. The throttle is 927 filings against the steering’s 457, and it is 44 percent of everything owners have written about this car.

The timing is stranger than the ranking. 721 of those 927 arrived in 2013 alone.

Owners have filed 2,127 complaints with NHTSA about the 2010 model year. Ford sold 173,044 Escapes in calendar 2009 and 191,026 in 2010, and the 2010 model year sold across both, so the denominator is in the hundreds of thousands. That is not a rate — 2,127 filings are not 2,127 owners — and the count earns its keep only because the other years in this series are counted the same way.

The basics

Carryover bodywork, and one change under it that matters for reading this page: the 3.0-liter V6 becomes a flex-fuel engine for 2010, and EPA lists it separately from the four-cylinder cars because of it. The 2.5-liter four and the six-speed automatic carry over from the 2009.

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 1,992. The remaining 135 are spread thin — NHTSA tagged 41 of them structure, 27 unknown or other, 20 visibility, and 18 suspension.

Engine identification comes from decoding the VIN attached to each filing. 1,852 of the 2,127 decode to the V6 or the 2.5-liter four: V6 67.8 percent, 2.5L 32.2 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. And on this model year one section is large enough to bend the rest: the throttle is 44 percent of the record and runs 80 percent V6, so everything outside it runs below the baseline as a matter of arithmetic.

Only the throttle’s own lean is worth reading.

Throttle — 927

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

The only time in five model years that steering is not first. It is not the largest section in the generation — the 2008 car’s steering is 1,245 filings and 52 percent of that car’s record, against 44 percent here.

641 filings name the throttle body, 240 name the wrench light, 58 name limp mode.

The failure owners describe is the same one on the 2009 car: the wrench light appears, the car drops into reduced power, and a restart clears it until the next time.

It runs 80.3 percent V6 against a 67.8 percent baseline, and that holds up when the labels are taken out of it: counted from the filing text alone, 640 filings name the throttle body, the wrench light or limp mode, and 80.8 percent of those decode to the V6.

The lean is real.

Steering — 457

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

Down from 843 on the 2009 car. Same failure — 65 filings use “lost” or “loss of” with steering — and the same recall, 14V284000, which 104 filings name by number.

Fuel — 181

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged fuel system or fuel propulsion, plus those that name the fuel pump, fuel tank or fuel line, and not already counted above.

The fire recall lives here, and it is V6-only.

Transmission — 169

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

Engine — 94

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

Rear glass — 74

This one is not a category in NHTSA’s grouping. Counted as filings that name a window, the glass, the liftgate or the hatch together with a word for it breaking — shattered, exploded, blew out, burst — that also name the rear, and that do not already appear above.

NHTSA filed them under four different components: visibility, visibility and wipers, structure, and unknown.

Read together they are one thing.

50 of the 74 say the glass broke as the liftgate was being closed. 21 say the car was parked. Two say it happened while driving, and 14 mention an injury or a cut.

From ODI 11383787:

“I DROVE A SHORT DISTANCE TO A NEARBY PARK, PARKED THE VEHICLE, TOOK MY DOG OUT OF THE BACK, AND CLOSED THE THE REAR LIFTGATE/HATCHBACK IN A NORMAL FASHION. WE WERE JUST WALKING AWAY FROM THE CAR WHEN THE REAR WINDOW EXPLODED.”

From ODI 11325450:

“TL* THE CONTACT OWNS A 2010 FORD ESCAPE. THE CONTACT STATED THAT AFTER LOADING GROCERIES INTO THE REAR CARGO AREA OF THE VEHICLE, THE HATCH DOOR WAS CLOSED AND THE REAR HATCH WINDOW SHATTERED. THERE WAS GLASS ON THE CONTACT AND INSIDE OF THE VEHICLE. THE CONTACT WAS NOT INJURED BY THE SHATTERED GLASS.”

Counted the same way, the 2009 car has four and the 2008 has seven. The 2011 has 37 and the 2012 has eight. This is a 2010 and 2011 problem with its peak here, and no recall covers it.

Brakes — 45

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

Electrical — 45

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged electrical system.

The rest is thin

135 filings, none of them forming a pattern. The largest groups are 41 that NHTSA tagged structure, 27 unknown or other, and 20 visibility.

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, and 10E043000, Marathon aftermarket seat covers.

16V777000 — the fuel delivery module, reported October 2016, covering 2010–2012 Escapes built February 26, 2009 through April 29, 2012. Ford’s summary is specific about which cars: “On vehicles with a 3.0L engine, the Fuel Delivery Module (FDM) may crack, causing a fuel leak.” The consequence Ford states is fire.

The remedy text says something you do not often see in a recall document:

“Ford will notify owners, and dealers will replace the FDM flange with one that has a redesigned fuel supply port, free of charge. Remedy parts are currently unavailable. Interim notices were mailed to owners on December 13, 2016. Owners will receive a second notice when remedy parts become available.”

47 filings on this model year say a recall part was not available. That is Ford’s own document and the owners saying the same thing. What the record does not say is when the parts arrived, or whether they have.

14V284000 — the steering, reported May 2014, covering 2008–2011 Escape and Mercury Mariner. 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 for the power steering control module unless the car has already logged a fault.

10V222000 — the narrowest campaign in this generation. It covers 2010 Fusion, Milan and Escape vehicles “MANUFACTURED FROM FEBRUARY 27, THROUGH MARCH 26, 2010” — one month of production. The park rod guide retention pin may not have been installed properly, which puts the car outside FMVSS 114. Ford’s stated consequence:

“A VEHICLE PARKED WITHOUT AN ENGAGED PARK PAWL AND WITHOUT AN APPLIED PARKING BRAKE MAY HAVE UNINTENDED MOVEMENT WHICH MAY CAUSE A CRASH.”

A month of production. A campaign existing and a campaign covering your car are different facts, and this one is the sharpest example of it in the generation. Five filings name it.

What doesn’t show up in the complaints

NHTSA rated the 2010 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.

Nothing in the record says the crash performance is a problem. Air bags are 13 filings in NHTSA’s grouping. Seat belts are five.

The flex-fuel V6 costs about two miles per gallon against the four-cylinder in EPA’s combined figure and gains E85 capability. No filing on this page is about running E85.

What the complaint curve says

2010   49     2014  166     2018  159     2022   43
2011   26     2015   94     2019   89     2023   44
2012   92     2016  108     2020   73     2024   36
2013  926     2017  132     2021   46     2025   28

926 filings arrived in 2013. That is 44 percent of everything this car has ever drawn, in one year, and 721 of the 926 are throttle filings.

The monthly shape is tight. 163 in June, 170 in July, 186 in August, 119 in September.

The 2009 car has the same spike in the same months, at its own scale. Nine filings on each model year name a Ford customer satisfaction program, 13N03, and describe it as covering throttle body failures. 13N03 does not appear in NHTSA’s recall database. What is on this page about it comes from the filings.

None of this car’s three recalls is the throttle. The steering campaign came in 2014 and the fuel one in 2016, both after the spike.

The spike came first.

A complaint count going up can mean a letter arrived rather than that a car got worse. On this model year that is most of the recent data, and the letter was not a recall letter.

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, the engine split inside the largest category, and the timing.

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 V6, ask whether recall 16V777000 has been done and whether the part was actually installed. This is the fire one. Ford’s own remedy text said the parts were unavailable when the interim notices went out, and 47 filings say the same. An interim notice is not a repair.

Ask whether the throttle body has been replaced, and get the receipt. 927 filings, no recall, and a VIN lookup will not settle it — a customer satisfaction program does not show up there.

Drive it far enough to reach highway speed and hold it. The wrench light comes on at speed, on a trip rather than around town.

Open and close the liftgate a few times, and look at the glass edges. 74 filings describe the rear window breaking, and 50 of those say it happened as the gate was being closed. No recall, no warning light.

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.

If it was built between February 27 and March 26, 2010, check 10V222000. That is the rollaway campaign, and the build date is on the door jamb sticker.

Numbers worth writing down

The 2011 car is next, and it is the last year the steering recall reaches.

Sources

• NHTSA complaint database — 2,127 complaints for the 2010 Escape, quoted above by ODI number
• NHTSA recall API — three Ford 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 — 2010 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 — 1,852 of the 2,127 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.