Unclassified problem on the 2000 Mercury Sable
6 crashes 6 injuries 12 of the 29 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 7 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
There are 29 reports of unclassified problem on the 2000 Mercury Sable, 7 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
It is the 54th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 44,000 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, 6 a crash and 6 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 10 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2000, at a median of 45,000 miles, and latest on the 2008 at 150,000 miles.
By volume the 2000 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.
While driving front driver an passenger air bags inadvertently deployed. The consumer managed to drive to the dealership. The dealership's mechanic did not resolve the problem. *ak the vehicle had no exterior damage. The insurance company denied the claim stating that the problem was a mechanical defect. *nm
2000 mercury sable with adjustable brake and gas pedals was recalled for spacing issue. Told on recall no adjustment needed. Had bad crash. After crash told two more times adjustment not needed. This car has a brake pedal that wobbles side to side 7 mm and a gas pedal that wobbles side to side 1 cm. Odi in washington told me that as brake and gas pedal unit is brought forward the 3 inch distance for a shorter person the side to side wobble of brake pedal becomes worse causing you to hit the gas. They also said adjustment should have been made on this car. Ford refuses to acknowledge problem and to do anything about it. This vehicle is very, very dangerous to drive.
Driving down road in my 2000 mercury sable ,stopped at redlight,tried to pull out,car would only rev up and not move. There were no signs that the transmission was going bad just up and quit pulling. We were.stuck in middle of road ,with cars passing around us. We.was in danger of getting hit. We had 100 miles to drive on freeway to get home. If this had happened then, we surely would have been hit by a passing car. I have researched this a lot and have found this a common problem with these cars. *tt
Also reported on the 2000 Mercury Sable
Strut, shock or spring failure
Other suspension problem
Other speed control problem
Other lighting problem
Other brake problem
Tail light, brake light or signal failure
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 29 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 29 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 2000 Mercury Sable?
Across 7 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 45,000 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 unclassified problem on the 2000 Mercury Sable?
29 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.2 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