Other powertrain problem on the 2012 Ford Focus
19 crashes 2 fires 7 injuries 28 of the 918 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
When other powertrain problem gets reported
Owners of the 2012 Ford Focus report other powertrain problem at a median of 48,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 20,000 miles and a quarter after 84,000 miles, from 746 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 92,000 miles. It is the 1st most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 2,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 120,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 117,643 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
39% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,000 miles | 19,703 miles | 48,000 miles | 83,875 miles | 119,643 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 19 a crash, 2 a fire and 7 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $400–$4,500 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 19 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2003, at a median of 17,500 miles, and latest on the 2008 at 80,000 miles.
By volume the 2014 carries the most reports, with 1,074; the 2012 has 918. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
We purchased this car on 08/19/2011 and the next day while taking off from a stop sign the car would shudder, I do not have this issue when the transmission is cold but in stop and go driving and normal city driving after it has warmed up. Also when you depress the accelerator from a stop the vehicle will go for a second then have a nice sized flat spot so even the people in the car will go forward as if the brakes were coming on. I took the vehicle to the dealer and the tech drove it and verified that it did have this issue. They contacted ford and ford stated that it was normal and told them to do nothing. I complained to ford customer service and all the lady had to say was that it is normal. Also ford had stated that these are isolated incidents, if they are indeed isolated then they cannot be considered normal but rather a defect that ford does not want to address. I was told that the clutches require a break-in but ford does not state any break-in procedure that pertains just to the clutches other then the normal 1000 mile break-in for the vehicle in general. I and others I have communicated with all have these issues after…
We purchased this car on 08/19/2011 and the next day while taking off from a stop sign the car would shudder, I do not have this issue when the transmission is cold but in stop and go driving and normal city driving after it has warmed up. Also when you depress the accelerator from a stop the vehicle will go for a second then have a nice sized flat spot so even the people in the car will go forward as if the brakes were coming on. I took the vehicle to the dealer and the tech drove it and verified that it did have this issue. They contacted ford and ford stated that it was normal and told them to do nothing. I complained to ford customer service and all the lady had to say was that it is normal. Also ford had stated that these are isolated incidents, if they are indeed isolated then they cannot be considered normal but rather a defect that ford does not want to address. I was told that the clutches require a break-in but ford does not state any break-in procedure that pertains just to the clutches other then the normal 1000 mile break-in for the vehicle in general. I and others I have communicated with all have these issues after…
We bought our focus earlier this year and immediatley noticed stumbling on acceleration and rough idling. The car feels like it's going to stall when it taking off from a stop or when making hard accelerations. We took the car to the dealer the first week of ownership to have this looked at, but ford told us it needed to break in and that there were no error codes when they ran a diagnositc. The probelm has never been fixed although the symptoms were confirmed by the shop foreman. The second time we took the car in as the shuddering was worse, the dealer had it for over 30 days and put 700 miles on the car to no avail. We have all the paperwork documenting their testing and the dates they have had the vehicle. A rep from ford came out to take a look at the car as well during this time, and once again told them this was normal and would go away. We now have about 2300 miles on the car and it is only getting worse. We have filed a claim through ford motor company for a buy back on the car due to safety concerns but we were denied as of today, and also told that the car does not qualify as a lemon in the state of california. They…
Also reported on the 2012 Ford Focus
Other steering problem
Other engine problem
Other body or interior problem
Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure
Door latch or handle failure
Other electrical problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 918 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does other powertrain problem happen on the 2012 Ford Focus?
Across 746 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 48,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 20,000 miles and a quarter after 84,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is other powertrain problem on the 2012 Ford Focus?
918 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 5.0 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed