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The implied cause of the T-bone accident in the article is wrong; a transmission slipping into gear while stopped would stall a small idling engine like what would be in a Focus. That would be the throttle body issue, which in my opinion should have been the focus of the article over crap transmissions

Edit: better article - https://www.ncconsumer.org/news-articles/nhtsa-opens-investi...

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I disagree. The transmission in the Focus/Fiesta fails to apply clutch torque correctly pretty often. This problem is especially noticeable at low speeds. Clutch engagement failure would not cause a stall, since the engine would just spin freely in neutral the entire time, burning up the clutch and causing it to engage even less.

It only takes an hour behind the wheel of one of these to realize that Ford knowingly sold a poorly designed, dangerous product to customers. People don't realize how bad these are until they actually drive them. All lawyers would have to do to win a class-action against Ford for this would be to let the jury take one of these home for the night, they will come back the next day with a unanimous guilty verdict.

Ford settled: http://fordtransmissionsettlement.com/

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