Unclassified problem on the 2002 Lincoln Town Car
5 crashes 8 injuries 13 of the 15 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 11 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 unclassified problem gets reported
Owners of the 2002 Lincoln Town Car report unclassified problem at a median of 70,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 50,000 miles and a quarter after 135,000 miles, from 11 reports that carried an odometer reading.
It is the 26th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 10,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 155,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 143,350 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
A spread this wide points at use rather than design. Towing, climate, service history and city mileage all move a failure like this, so the median is a weak guide to any individual car.
18% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9,650 miles | 47,767 miles | 70,000 miles | 134,500 miles | 153,000 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, 5 a crash and 8 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.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 12 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2004, at a median of 55,000 miles, and latest on the 2000 at 140,000 miles.
By volume the 2001 carries the most reports, with 46; the 2002 has 15. 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.
While driving at 45 MPH the vehicle was involved in a frontal collision. The front air bags failed to deploy and as a result the passenger sustained a painful bruise over the left anterior rib cage. There was sufficient frontal impact but the driver believes the air bag failure may be due to the positioning of the air bag sensor. *ak *scc *nlm
At approx. 8 pm on sat. Oct.9 my wife and I were returning home, traveling on rt. 95 northbound in the center lane of 3, going at the speed limit of 70 MPH. Without warning the side air bag on the driver's side deployed.luckily there were no cars on either side of us,and we managed to get the car under control and off the highway.we inspected the car and could not find any damage.although we were pretty shook up,we were not injured(due to the lack of traffic).after several calming minutes we continued to our home.our car is a 2002 lincoln town car.we took the car to where we purchased and serviced the car(wallace lincoln/mercury/volvo-3801 se federal highway,stuart fl 34997,772-283-6000)on monday(we have an original and extended warranty contract).wallace gave us a rental car and said they would check it out.the next day wallace service mgr.(russ ellis)reported that nothing was wrong with the car except for the unexplained deployment of the airbag.since the warranty was with ford,a ford engineer had to come to inspect the car.finally on oct. 20 he came and reported a small dent on the car underside was the result of running over…
Dt*: the contact stated while driving 55mph, the vehicle was hit from the rear causing it to hit a metal fence. Neither air bag deployed. The dealership advised the contact to notify ford motor company, which has not been done. The vehicle had extensive damage. Seat belts were in use, however injuries were sustained and there was a police report filed.
Also reported on the 2002 Lincoln Town Car
Other speed control problem
Other brake problem
Other body or interior problem
Airbag failed to deploy in a crash
Loss of braking
Rust or structural corrosion
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 15 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 15 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 unclassified problem happen on the 2002 Lincoln Town Car?
Across 11 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 70,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 50,000 miles and a quarter after 135,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is unclassified problem on the 2002 Lincoln Town Car?
15 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 179 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