Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure on the 2003 Ford Taurus
2 crashes 2 injuries 4 of the 3 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.
Only 3 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When control module (ecm/pcm/bcm) failure gets reported
There are 3 reports of control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure on the 2003 Ford Taurus, 3 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 92,000 miles. It is the 45th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 42,000 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, 2 a crash and 2 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 $700–$3,000 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 15 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2010, at a median of 30,000 miles, and latest on the 2001 at 120,000 miles.
By volume the 2013 carries the most reports, with 30; the 2003 has 3. 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.
Vehicle was in a collision while going 50 MPH. Consumer's vehicle hit another vehicle from the rear, and front air bags failed to deploy. *ak the consumer sustained injuries from the seat belt. *tc
I was recently involved in a front end collision. I was driving a 2002 ford taurus se. I was driving on the freeway doing about 55 MPH. A chain reaction of accidents started and I was unable to stop in time to avoid rear ending the car in front of me. Approximate speed at the time of impact was 50 MPH. The entire front driver side of the car was destroyed. The problem is the passenger air bag deployed. There was no one sitting in the passenger seat. The driver side did not deploy. I hit the steering wheel hard. The car has been totaled. The chp office, body shop manager, and the insurance adjuster have all said the air bag should have deployed. I was not seriously injured, I.e. Nothing was broken, and therefore didn''t seek any medical attention. Short of bruising, soreness, and a couple of scrapes I was fine. I contact ford about the issue and they gave me the run around and spouted out a bunch of legal banter. I informed them that I was not interested in seeking litigation, I simply wanted a tech to inform me of why my air bag did not deploy, when it most defiantly should have. They again and again gave me the run around, only…
Tl*the contact owns a 2003 ford taurus. While driving 60 MPH, the vehicle would shut off. The dealer was unable to determine the cause of the failure. The vehicle was taken to a personal mechanic, but he also could not identify the failure. The mechanic reprogrammed the PCM to the latest calibration level, which was recommended, but that did not solve the issue. The contact feels that the vehicle is unsafe to drive because it shuts off and could cause a crash. The current mileage was 57,000 and failure mileage was 42,000. Updated 1/8/09 *cn updated 01/14/09.*jb
Also reported on the 2003 Ford Taurus
Strut, shock or spring failure
Blower motor or climate control failure
Other powertrain problem
Complete transmission failure
Other suspension problem
Other body or interior problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 3 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 3 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 control module (ecm/pcm/bcm) failure happen on the 2003 Ford Taurus?
Across 3 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 40,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is control module (ecm/pcm/bcm) failure on the 2003 Ford Taurus?
3 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.0 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