Other body or interior problem on the 2005 Mercury Montego
1 crash 1 injury 2 of the 13 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 body or interior problem gets reported
Owners of the 2005 Mercury Montego report other body or interior problem at a median of 80,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 65,000 miles and a quarter after 120,000 miles, from 12 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 88,000 miles. It is the 6th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 60,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 145,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 87,273 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.
8% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 59,477 miles | 66,884 miles | 79,500 miles | 120,280 miles | 146,750 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, 1 a crash and 1 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 $200–$2,000 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 3 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2006, at a median of 35,000 miles, and latest on the 2005 at 80,000 miles.
By volume the 2005 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
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.
My husband was driving a 2005 mercury montego on a highway at 55mph when a jeep liberty crossed the median and impacted his car. It was a shearing impact, not a side impact. Our rear driver's side door and that quarter of the vehicle was ripped completely off. The rear driver's side door was bent over double with the liberty's license plate wedged in the middle. Our one month old son's car seat base was located in the middle of the rear seat and there were tire tracks where his head would have been had he been in the car. The only passenger was my husband in the driver's position. He has musculoskeletal injuries and a broken finger, but anyone in the back seat would have been massacred and killed. We were stunned because we thought the montego was a relatively safe vehicle. *tr
2005 mercury montego has close to 90k miles. Kept in great condition but the transmission is giving same signs as reported many times on this thread. Jerking between gears and kicking back really hard. The company will hear us if we join together we're learning that with toyota. Let's get together and fight this one.. It's not fair!!!! Facebook me [xxx] and let's get a plan. Information redacted pursuant to the freedom of information act (foia), 5 u.s.c. 552(b)(6). *tr
I have a 2005 mercury montego. I was driving at 55 MPH in a freeway and suddenly the arm that goes from the chassis to support the left rear wheel broke right in the middle, or the joint part, leaving the wheel completely without support which almost made me lose control of the car. At first I thought a tire blew up, but once I stopped I saw the bar broke in the center hanging from the chassis and the other part hanging from the wheel. Going at 55 MPH and having no control over the back wheel it was a miracle I did not end up having a serious accident. There is no part available, in order for a repair to be performed you have to purchase a chassis of the same model, or go to a machine shop and see if it can be manufactured. There was no sign before it happen, at the moment it happen it sounded like a tire being blown up and it may feels like such. *tr
Also reported on the 2005 Mercury Montego
Other powertrain problem
Other speed control problem
Other engine problem
Complete transmission failure
Other electrical problem
Other brake problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 13 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 body or interior problem happen on the 2005 Mercury Montego?
Across 12 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 80,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 65,000 miles and a quarter after 120,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is other body or interior problem on the 2005 Mercury Montego?
13 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.3 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