2014 Ford Escape3rd gen (2013–2019), second year

Updated 2026-08-29NHTSA counts read on this date — 2076 complaints. They rise over time.

103 Fire Reports on the 2014 Ford Escape, and the VINs Point at One Engine

The 2014 Escape largely carries over the 2013’s mechanical package with a year of production behind it. Same three engines, same six-speed, same body. The complaint record is not the same, and the difference is worth looking at directly: fewer filings overall, more fires.

Owners have filed 2,076 complaints with NHTSA about the 2014 model year. Ford sold 295,993 Escapes in calendar 2013 and 306,209 in 2014, and the 2014 model year sold across both, so the denominator is in the hundreds of thousands. That is not a rate — 2,076 filings are not 2,076 owners — and the count earns its keep only because the other years in this series are counted the same way.

The basics

Second year of the third-generation Escape. Three four-cylinder engines, all with the same six-speed automatic: a 2.5-liter in front-wheel drive only, and EcoBoost turbos at 1.6 and 2.0 liters.

As on the 2013 car, which engine it has matters more than which trim it is.

Specs

Horsepower is from NHTSA’s vPIC catalog, which holds what the manufacturer submitted. Fuel economy is EPA. Towing is Ford’s own 2014 RV & Trailer Towing Guide.

The 3,500-pound figure needs the Class II Trailer Tow Package; the other two are dealer-accessory hitches, because Ford did not offer a factory tow package on the 2.5L or the 1.6L. The EPA highway number on the 1.6L front-driver went down one mpg from 2013, which is the only spec on the whole car that moved.

NHTSA rated it four stars overall — four frontal, five side, four rollover, the same as the 2013 on both drivetrains.

What owners filed

Sections below are sorted by count and each complaint is counted once. They add up to 1,584. The remaining 492 are spread thin — NHTSA tagged 119 of them engine, 106 electrical, and 42 wheels, and no single failure inside that group reaches thirty.

Engine identification comes from decoding the VIN attached to each filing. 1,971 of the 2,076 decode, and across all of them the 1.6L EcoBoost is 66.9 percent — a share of the complaint record, not of the cars Ford built. Every section below is read against it.

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.

Coolant and overheating — 572

Counted as filings that name the coolant, the engine overheating, the cylinder head cup plug, or a head gasket, and that NHTSA has not flagged as a fire.

553 of the 572 decode, and 514 of those are the 1.6L. Against a baseline of 66.9 percent, that is 92.9.

225 use the word overheat. 114 say the car was towed. 53 name a head gasket. 52 describe the engine being replaced.

From ODI 11745191:

“2014 Ford Escape. 1.6L ecoboost engine. Bought the car a couple of years ago from a local Ford dealership. The car was immediately using coolant, but never saw where it was leaking. There was never a spot on the ground where it was leaking. Took car to local mechanic and they replaced water pump. Stating possibly leaking. Car continued to use coolant. A few mornings ago, tried to start car, loud pop sound, white smoke, and engine knocking. Car has 124,000 miles on it. What Now?”

Ford has one 2014-only engine campaign, 17V209000, filed in March 2017. It covers 1.6L GTDI cars and says that if the vehicle “is started and driven with an insufficient level of coolant within the engine cooling system, the engine cylinder head may overheat, crack and leak oil.”

Read that against the filing above. The remedy Ford describes and the failure the owner describes agree on the mechanism and disagree on the order of events.

There is one more coolant campaign on this car, and it lands on the other engine. 26V011000, filed in January 2026, covers 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.” Owners of the 1.6L noticed. From ODI 11739336:

“Apparent coolant leak identified in my 2014 Ford Escape 1.6L (Ecoboost). The car loses approx. 500mL of coolant each time I drive it, and I need to refill the coolant tank before every time I need to use it. I traced the coolant leak back to the blockheater, which has a failed seal. There is currently a recall for leaking block heaters on the 2.0L Escape motors, but this problem appears to extend to the 1.6L Ecoboost engine as well.”

Whether it does is not something the complaint record can settle.

Transmission and shifter — 437

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

This is the section that separates the 2014 from the 2013 car. It holds 21 percent of everything filed here against 12 percent on the 2013. 88 name the shifter, the shift cable, or the bushing. 58 describe a transmission being replaced. 39 describe the car rolling or moving on its own. 54 cite one of the two shifter recalls by number.

Ford recalled the same bushing twice. 18V471000 arrived in July 2018 for 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 remove the key while the transmission is not in Park, “with no warning message or audible chime.” In June 2022, 22V413000 covered 2013–2019 Escapes for a bushing that “may degrade or detach.”

From ODI 11501633:

“The contact owns a 2014 Ford Escape. The contact stated that after starting the vehicle and shifting from the park, the transmission shifter became stuck and could not be moved. The contact stated that the failure occurred after shifting to drive(D) and reverse(R). The cause of the failure was not yet determined. The manufacturer and local dealer were not yet notified of the failure. The failure mileage was 140,000.”

Stalling — 153

Counted as filings that say the car stalled.

Smaller than the 2013’s stalling section, and the reason is where the filings land rather than what happened: on this model year most of the cars that quit are described in coolant terms first, so they are counted above. 100 of the 145 that decode here are the 1.6L.

Power steering — 122

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

64 of the 122 quote the dashboard message by name. It reads steering assist fault. 81 place the failure while driving.

The 1.6L share is 39 percent — well below the 66.9 baseline. Whatever this is, it is not the engine problem wearing a different hat. NHTSA has no recall against the 2014 Escape for the electric steering assist.

Fires — 103

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

103 of the 2,076 filings carry it. That is more than any other third-generation Escape — the 2013 has 89, and 2015 through 2019 run 19, 10, 15, 5 and 3. Of the 100 fire complaints carrying a VIN that decodes, 94 are the 1.6L.

84 describe it while driving. 14 while parked. 27 use the words total loss, destroyed, or engulfed.

From ODI 11722373:

“2014 Ford Escape 1.6L engine with ECO boost. Alarm on dash for High Engine temperature, Stop Safely. Pulled vehicle to side of road and fire was under hood. Attempted to extinguish with standard fire extinguisher; called 911 and fire department had to extinguisher. Vehicle was towed to local shop.”

And ODI 11519024, which is the same sequence with no stop in the middle:

“While driving down the road my Ford escape lost most of its power while still in drive and running (was running at roughly 6000-7000rpms but going no faster than 15 MPH, when after about a mile of this it completely died, lost any ability to brake or steer, then the engine started smoking very bad and within seconds we saw flames coming up onto the windshield from under the hood. within about 10 minutes the entire car was engulfed in flames and totally destroyed/melted/burned.”

Ford’s 2012 campaign on the 2013 car said the mechanism out loud — 12V551000 warned that “coolant system leaks may cause the engines to overheat and leak flammable engine fluids.” That campaign does not cover the 2014.

Door latch — 89

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

Three campaigns touch this on the 2014: 14V239000 (2013–2014 Escape, doors “difficult to close or may possibly open while driving”), 16V643000, and 20V331000. The 1.6L share is 45 percent, closer to the baseline than the engine sections, which is what you would expect from a door.

From ODI 11643460:

“The contact owns a 2014 Ford Escape. The contact stated that after opening the rear driver’s side door, the locking mechanism failed, and the door failed to remain closed. The vehicle was taken to the local dealer who diagnosed that the interior door latch mechanism had failed and needed to be replaced. The mechanism was replaced, and the vehicle was repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failure, but no assistance was offered. The failure mileage was approximately 100,000.”

Backup camera — 81

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged back-over prevention, plus those that name the backup, rear or reverse camera.

The 2013 car has twelve of these. The 2014 has 81, and the failure has a shape: 41 mention the image or the screen, 25 say the picture comes up upside down, 23 say it goes black.

From ODI 11751930:

“Rear camera intermittently does not work properly. Multiple incidents of the rear camera flickering off and on when in reverse, image is sometimes upside down, or the rear camera doesn’t work at all.”

There is no camera recall against the 2014 Escape. Ford issued 25V695000 in 2025 for rear cameras on a list of vehicles that starts at the 2015 model year, and 37 of these 81 filings mention a recall — usually one an owner found and then discovered did not list their car.

Brakes — 27

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged service brakes.

Small, and the 1.6L share is 12.5 percent, the lowest of any section here.

About the four deaths in the database

NHTSA’s death field totals four on this model year, across three filings, and the number does not survive reading them.

One filing carries a death and consists entirely of a blank form heading with no text. A second carries a death and describes a passenger door that will not close, ending: “My 2-year-old son could have flown out the door as he sits on that side in his car seat.” Nobody died in that car. The third carries two deaths, is flagged as both a crash and a fire, and its complete text is three words long.

The complaint database is filled in by owners, and the numeric fields are filled in by owners too. Across the same 2,076 filings NHTSA counts 47 crashes and 41 injuries, and those figures are subject to the same caution.

What doesn’t show up in the complaints

The body and the interior barely appear — 57 structure filings and no seat pattern at all. The crash performance that earned four stars overall and five on side impact has not generated a pattern of complaints. The 2.5L, the engine with no turbo, is 125 filings out of the 1,971 that decode; it is also the rarest of the three, so that is a note about what this article is describing rather than a reliability finding.

What the complaint curve says

Filings ran about 60 a year through 2016, climbed to a peak of 286 in 2019, fell to 136 in 2021, and then went back up — 232 in 2022 and 206 in 2023. 2026 stands at 75 with the year unfinished.

That second hump is worth naming and not explaining. A curve that declines and then rises again is not what a wearing-out fleet does on its own. The shifter bushing recall widened to cover this car in June 2022, which is when the second rise starts, and 54 filings in the transmission section cite a shifter recall by number. Whether the recall produced the filings or the failures produced both is not something the complaint record can settle.

Complaint databases collect complaints. Nobody files to say the engine is fine, and a car that sold 300,000 units a year generates more filings than a rare one at the same 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 decoder is free. On this model year the 1.6L EcoBoost is 94 of the 100 fire complaints whose VIN decodes and 93 percent of the coolant section, against 67 percent of all filings that decode. Nothing else you check will change the picture as much.

Watch the temperature gauge on a long drive. The message owners quote is High Engine temperature, Stop Safely, and in the filings above it arrives on a highway, not in a parking lot. A car that has been topped up with coolant recently is a car to ask questions about.

Ask whether the shifter cable bushing has been done, and which campaign. Ford recalled it in 2018 and again in 2022. Thirty-nine filings describe a car that rolled or moved on its own. Ask for the repair order and check the number against 18V471000 and 22V413000.

Put it in reverse and look at the screen. Eighty-one filings describe the backup camera, 25 of them an image that comes up upside down. There is no recall for it on this model year, so a working camera today is the whole of what you can verify.

Open and close all four doors from the outside. 89 filings describe a latch that will not hold, and three campaigns touch it — 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. It is the only item on this list that costs money before you own the car, and the only one that sees the failure that dominates this model year before it strands you.

Numbers worth writing down

NHTSA lists 16 campaigns against this model year. The panorama roof one covers eight days of production, which is a reminder that a campaign existing and a campaign covering your car are different facts.

The 2015 car is next, and the engine story starts to move off the front page.

Sources

• NHTSA complaint database — 2,076 complaints for the 2014 Escape, quoted above by ODI number
• NHTSA recall API — 16 campaigns, quoted from the campaign summaries
• NHTSA vPIC — engine and horsepower, decoded from the VINs attached to the filings
• NHTSA safety ratings — 2014 Escape 4x2 and 4x4
• EPA fueleconomy.gov — fuel economy by engine and drive
• Ford 2014 RV & Trailer Towing Guide (official)
• GoodCarBadCar — Escape US 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 — 1,971 of the 2,076 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.