Steering Assist Malfunction occurred while driving home from work in peak hour traffic. Mechanic replaced the steering rack and 2 weeks later it occurred again. The mechanic discovered the new part he had ordered had the same issue. He has now requested a fully rebuilt one to ensure the supplier does not provide another faulty rack. In the meantime, my mechanic is negotiating with the extended warranty provider and Ford to cover the cost. Ford is not playing very nice and shame on them for not acknowledging this huge issue across a range of makes and models. A total recall should be made (not just a select few). Are more people going to killed and hospitalized before Ford will do the ethical thing. Ford - shame..shame..shame!!!

In April this year I tried to drive my car (2011 Ford Focus; mileage ~41,000 km) home from a memorial service but after turning the engine on and reversing the car, my steering completely locked up and I was unable to steer the car at all. An error message was displayed on the car's dashboard (Steering Assist Fault - Service Required). After several attempts at turning the engine on and off, the error message disappeared and the car regained its steering so I drove home. At home I did a web search and found numerous similar complaints (case studies and news stories) about steering failures in 2011 and 2012 Ford Focus cars, including repeated failures while people were driving, some resulting in injury (including head on crashes and 1 death under investigation). Given the potential consequences of incurring another steering failure I took my car to the local Ford dealer (Gateway Ford, Wollongong). They "checked power steering Assist Fault", found a code that confirmed there had been an electric fault and cleared the code. Although they cleared the code, the service personnel agreed that they had not done and would not do any further diagnostic work to find the cause of the steering fault. They could not provide any guarantee that the steering would not fail again and told me to ring Ford Australia. Despite a 30 minute phone conversation, Ford Australia said that when the steering failed again, have the car towed back to the Ford dealership but make sure the car was running (i.e. don't return the engine off) so they can see the problem. I believe this is illegal and cars must have their engines off when towed. The Ford Australia representative would not let me speak to her manager. So Ford left me with a potential death trap, knowing the steering had already failed once, knowing that the cause of the failure hadn't been identified, refusing to do further diagnostic work to find out the cause, and knowing this fault had caused injury/death in previous incidents reported on the web. Although several people encouraged me to sell the car, I did not – knowing it had this potential lethal fault. After restricting my driving to relatively straight roads, the steering failed again in July on my way to a funeral. Luckily I was driving slowly enough to react without causing damage to myself or anyone else on the road. We left the car with Ford Gateway who, after a few days, were able to replicate the fault and therefore diagnose the issue [they could not diagnose the problem until it was replicated, which would appear to be a major design limitation]. The whole steering rack has now been replaced, at substantial cost ($2090 AUD), with Ford Australia agreeing to pay only 60% of the costs, despite the issue clearly being a design fault. I was without a car for a month while the issue was resolved, with Ford refusing to provide a loan car because my car was out of warranty. I will be holding onto the receipts, anticipating a recall of this model because of the substantial safety issues associated with the design fault.