2013 Ford Escape3rd gen (2013–2019), first year

Updated 2026-08-28NHTSA counts read on this date — 2748 complaints. They rise over time.

The 2013 Ford Escape Has 18 Recalls. 182 Filings Say a Recall Didn’t Cover the VIN.

Ford redesigned the Escape for 2013 and sold a lot of them. It also recalled them eighteen times, which is more campaigns than any other model year in this generation, and most of the heavy ones are about one engine.

Owners have filed 2,748 complaints with NHTSA about the 2013 model year. Ford sold 279,674 Escapes in calendar 2012 and 295,993 in 2013, and the 2013 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 2,748 filings are not 2,748 owners. What the number is good for is comparison with the other model years in this series, counted the same way.

The basics

This is the first year of the third-generation Escape — a new platform, a new body, and the end of the boxy Escape that had been around since 2001. Three engines, all four-cylinder, all with the same six-speed automatic: a 2.5-liter that came only in front-wheel drive, and two EcoBoost turbos at 1.6 and 2.0 liters.

Which engine a car has matters more here than trim level does, and it is the thread running through everything below.

Specs

Horsepower and displacement are from NHTSA’s vPIC catalog, which holds what the manufacturer submitted. Fuel economy is EPA. Towing is Ford’s own 2013 RV & Trailer Towing Guide.

The 3,500-pound figure needs the Class II Trailer Tow Package. The other two numbers are dealer-accessory hitches — Ford did not offer a factory tow package on the 2.5L or the 1.6L. Ford’s guide notes the Escape’s wiring has no connector for electric trailer brakes, which is the practical limit on all three.

The 2013 Escape was one of the first vehicles Ford rated under the SAE J2807 towing standard, so these numbers are not comparable to a pre-2013 Escape’s on paper even where the car is similar.

How it was received

NHTSA gave it four stars overall — four for frontal crash, five for side, four for rollover, on both the 4x2 and 4x4. Forward collision warning was not offered, which is unremarkable for 2013 and worth knowing if you are cross-shopping this against something five years newer.

Reviewers liked it. The 2.0L makes 240 horsepower, which was a lot for a compact crossover in 2013, and the new platform drove better than the truck-ish thing it replaced. Sales went up for five straight years after this car launched.

What owners filed

Sections below are sorted by count and each complaint is counted once. They add up to 2,055. The remaining 693 are not all one-offs — NHTSA tagged 232 of them engine and 120 electrical, and a good number describe a car that shut off without using the word this article counts on.

Coolant and overheating — 819

Counted as filings that name the coolant, the engine overheating, the cylinder head cup plug, or a head gasket.

The largest thing on this car by a wide margin, and it is an engine-specific problem. Of the 819, 777 carry a VIN that decodes to an engine, and 736 of those 777 are the 1.6L EcoBoost. Across the whole 2,748, the 1.6L is 66 percent of decoded filings. Inside this section it is 95 percent.

This is not a failure rate by engine. The shares below are shares of the complaint record, not of the cars Ford built — the complaint record does not contain that. An engine that draws more complaints of every kind would move both numbers together.

346 of the 819 use the word overheat. 112 say the car was towed. 41 describe the engine being replaced.

The failure owners describe is coolant getting somewhere it should not be. From ODI 11712714:

“This is a known issue with 1.6L engine 2013 Ford Escapes and they have not issued an official recall on all VINs. The coolant tubing is faulty, causing several leaks and engine overheating, also leading to additional computer failures of the temperature gauge.”

Ford’s recalls describe the same mechanism in their own words. 12V431000 says the cylinder head cup plug “may become dislodged resulting in significant loss of engine coolant.” 13V583000 says the affected cars “may experience localized overheating of the engine cylinder head which may cause cracks that could allow oil to leak.”

Both cover 1.6L cars, and both cover a build window. That is where the 182 filings below come from.

Stalling — 434

Counted as filings that say the car stalled, and that do not already name the coolant.

339 of these place it while driving or at a stated speed. 85 say there was no warning. 137 mention restarting the car. The 1.6L share here is 62 percent, close to its share of the whole database, so unlike the coolant section this is not one engine’s problem.

From ODI 11689133:

“The contact owns a 2013 Ford Escape. The contact stated while driving at an undisclosed speed, the vehicle stalled and failed to return to normal operation. No warning lights were illuminated. The vehicle was towed to a dealer where it was diagnosed and determined that the transmission needed to be replaced. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failure. The failure mileage was 90,000.”

One recall speaks to part of this. 15V813000 covers cars built January 2012 to April 2013 where the wiring splice to the manifold pressure sensor may feed the powertrain module a bad signal.

Transmission and shifter — 325

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

84 name the shifter, the shift cable, or the bushing. 43 describe the car rolling or moving on its own. 61 cite one of the two shifter recalls by number.

That is the part worth slowing down on, because Ford recalled the same bushing twice. 18V471000 came in July 2018 and covered 2013–2014 Escapes: the bushing attaching the shifter cable to the transmission “may degrade over time and cause the bushing to detach,” letting a driver select Park and take the key out while the transmission is not in Park, “with no warning message or audible chime.” Four years later, 22V413000 covered 2013–2019 Escapes for a bushing that “may degrade or detach.”

From ODI 11744970:

“The shifter wouldn’t go into park or start in park had to put in neutral to start it, was at a gas pump and the car started moving on its own had to jump in and pull the emergency brake to stop it and the vehicle was off, also the backup camera is upside down had it fixed but it goes right back upside down.”

Power steering — 212

Counted as filings that name the power steering or the steering assist.

131 of the 212 quote the dashboard message by name. It reads steering assist fault. 130 place the failure while driving. 77 mention a recall.

The 1.6L share here is 41 percent — below its share of the database, and the 2.0L is over-represented. Whatever this is, it is not the engine problem above wearing a different hat.

From ODI 11623358:

“The power steering stopped working as driving it. Dashboard message read “steering assist fault service” Unable to steering the vehicle properly which could have caused an accident. No warnings prior to the issue.”

NHTSA has no recall against the 2013 Escape for the electric steering assist. Ford recalled other cars for related failures, which is why 77 of these filings mention recalls that turn out not to list this car.

Door latch — 98

Counted as filings that name a door latch, or a door that opened or would not stay closed.

64 of the 98 mention a recall, which is the highest recall-mention rate of any section here — this is a problem owners know has a campaign attached. Three campaigns touch it: 14V239000 (2013–2014 Escape, doors “difficult to close or may possibly open while driving”), 16V643000, and 20V331000.

From ODI 11220248:

“WHILE DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD, THE LEFT REAR DOOR OPENED UP. PULLED OVER TO SHUT THE DOOR.. THE DOOR WILL NOT STAY SHUT. MY SON WAS IN THE BACK SEAT AND THANKFULLY ALWAYS WEARS HIS SEAT BELT. THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS AND SOMEONE CAN BE KILLED WITH THIS DEFECT.”

The 1.6L share here is 31 percent, the lowest of any section. Doors are not an engine problem, and the number landing where it should is a check that the engine splits above are reading something real.

Fires — 89

This is NHTSA’s own flag on the filing, not a word count.

89 of the 2,748 are flagged as involving a fire. 62 of those describe it while driving; 14 while parked; 19 name the area under the hood. Of the 88 that decode to an engine, 78 are the 1.6L.

From ODI 11577879:

“On 03-17-24 My daughter was driving a few miles away from home, when the dashboard system states “High engine temperature, pull over safely.” Within 30 seconds of pulling off the road, the flames came out near the windshield from under the hood. Within 5 minutes the car was fully engulfed and completely destroyed. I am so upset and frustrated that Ford is not taking this matter more seriously as this appears to be a common occurrence with these vehicles. Fortunately my daughter was uninjured.”

Ford’s 12V551000 recall, filed in December 2012, says it plainly: “Coolant system leaks may cause the engines to overheat and leak flammable engine fluids.” That campaign covers 1.6L cars built October 5, 2011 through November 26, 2012.

Across all 2,748 filings NHTSA counts 50 crashes, 55 injuries, and no deaths.

Brakes — 56

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged service brakes.

One 2013-only recall sits here: 12V319000, from July 2012, on cars built March 8 to June 7, 2012, where misplaced carpet padding pushed the center console trim toward the pedals and cut the clearance.

Fuel line — 22

Counted as filings that name the fuel line or a fuel leak.

Small, but 18 of the 21 that decode are the 1.6L, and two recalls sit against it — 12V336000 and 13V584000, both on fuel delivery hoses and lines.

The 182

Across all 2,748 filings, 182 say in one form or another that the recall does not list the owner’s car. 99 of those also name the coolant or overheating.

This is a design consequence, not a mystery. Ford’s engine recalls on this car are written against build windows: 12V431000 covers cars built October 5, 2011 through August 31, 2012. 12V551000 runs to November 26, 2012. 13V583000 extends to June 2, 2013. A 1.6L Escape assembled after that date is not in any of them.

From ODI 11711199:

“My car is the 2013 Ford Escape SEL 1.6 L ecoboost and have had same issue as the recalled 2013 ford escape sel 1.6L economist with over heating,thermostat,and cracked head with coolant leaking into head,why is my car not on recall also.I know this from diagnosis that was ran.”

And from ODI 11698925, an owner of the other turbo:

“Coolant intrusion on 2.0L ecoboost engine due to cracked cylinder head. Ford is aware of this issue yet has refused to issue a recall or offer a replacement to those affected as they have done for the 1.6L engines. The engine now needs to be fully replaced out of my own pocket.”

Whether those cars should be covered is not something the complaint record can settle. What it can say is how many people wrote it down.

There is one 2.0L engine campaign, and it arrived in January 2026: 26V011000, covering 2013–2019 Escapes with the 2.0L, for a block heater that “may crack and develop a coolant leak, causing it to short circuit when the block heater is plugged in.” That is a different failure from the one the filing above describes.

What doesn’t show up in the complaints

The body, the interior, and the seats barely appear. NHTSA’s structure category holds 59 filings out of 2,748, and the seats category three. The crash performance that earned four stars overall and five on side impact has not generated a pattern of complaints. Neither has the six-speed automatic on its own — the power train filings above are dominated by the shifter bushing and by cars that stalled, not by gearboxes that shift badly.

The 2.5L, the engine with no turbo and no direct injection, is 94 filings out of 2,548 that decode. It is also the rarest of the three, so that is not a reliability finding. It is a note about what the rest of this article is describing.

What the complaint curve says

Filings ran 27 in 2012 and about a hundred a year through 2015, then climbed every year to a peak of 404 in 2019 before falling back. 2026 stands at 36 with the year unfinished.

A car that peaks seven years after it goes on sale is not showing assembly defects. Head cracks and coolant intrusion take years and miles to arrive, and the median mileage on these filings sits around 75,000. The decline after 2019 is what a fleet leaving the road looks like as much as anything else — a 2013 car is thirteen years old now.

Complaint databases collect complaints. Nobody files to say the engine is fine, and a model that sold nearly 300,000 units a year generates more filings than a rare one at the same failure rate. 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.

Find out which engine it has before anything else. The eighth character of the VIN encodes it, and NHTSA’s free decoder will tell you in one step. On this model year the 1.6L EcoBoost is 95 percent of the coolant and overheating filings and 78 of the 88 fires that decode. That single fact should shape how much of the rest of this list you care about.

Run the VIN through the recall lookup and read the build dates. Eighteen campaigns is a lot, and the engine ones are limited to cars built inside a window. NHTSA’s lookup is free and tells you what applies to this specific car — which is the only version of the question that matters.

Ask whether the shifter cable bushing has been done, and which time. Ford recalled it in 2018 and again in 2022. Forty-three filings describe a car that rolled or moved on its own. If the seller says it was handled, ask for the repair order and check the campaign number against 18V471000 and 22V413000.

Watch the temperature gauge on a long drive, not a lap of the block. Owners describe overheating that arrives on the highway and not in a parking lot. If the car has a coolant reservoir that has been topped up recently, ask why.

Turn the wheel lock to lock with the engine running, and watch the dash. Steering assist fault is the message 131 of the 212 steering filings name. It is intermittent in most of them, so a clean test drive proves less than usual here.

Open and close all four doors, including from the outside. 98 filings describe a latch problem, and the three campaigns against it mean a dealer can settle it for free if the VIN is listed.

Get a compression or leak-down test if it is a 1.6L. This is the one item that costs money before you own the car. Neither test rules the failure out — an engine can pass both and fail later — but they are the cheapest look inside you can get.

Numbers worth writing down

NHTSA lists 18 campaigns against this model year; the table above names the ones the complaints actually talk about.

The 2014 car is next in this series, and it is the same engine story with a different fire count.

Sources

• NHTSA complaint database — 2,748 complaints for the 2013 Escape, quoted above by ODI number
• NHTSA recall API — 18 campaigns, quoted from the campaign summaries
• NHTSA vPIC — engine and horsepower, decoded from the VINs attached to the filings
• NHTSA safety ratings — 2013 Escape 4x2 and 4x4
• EPA fueleconomy.gov — fuel economy by engine and drive
• Ford 2013 RV & Trailer Towing Guide (official)
• GoodCarBadCar — Escape US sales figures

Complaint counts and quotes come from NHTSA’s public database, retrieved 2026-08-28; each quote lists its ODI number so you can look it up. Engine identification comes from decoding the VIN attached to each filing — 2,548 of the 2,748 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.