Ford Motor Co. said Wednesday it is extending its warranty for 560,000 Focus and Fiesta cars with troubled transmissions and will reimburse owners who paid for repairs not covered by the previous warranty.

Ford said the warranty was now good for seven years or 100,000 miles on "clutch and related hardware" for 2014-16 Focus and 2014-15 Fiesta vehicles assembled after July 4, 2013. In 2014, it extended the warranty on Fiestas and Focuses built before that.

The vehicles are equipped with a dual-clutch transmission Ford called the DPS6 that was intended to provide the fuel economy and performance of a manual transmission with the operational ease of an automatic.

A Free Press investigation published last month found, through company documents and insider interviews, that Ford knew the transmissions were defective before putting them on the market and continued using them for years despite thousands of consumer complaints. Our "Out of Gear" investigation also found that Ford tentatively decided in 2011 to abandon the transmission but opted against that expensive change.

Ford said Wednesday its actions were "independent of any media or litigation," which includes a class-action case whose $35 million settlement is under review and about 13,000 other cases from vehicle owners who opted out of the class action. Former Ford CEO Mark Fields was deposed in one set of those cases last month.

"We noticed an uptick of clutch repair and out-of-pocket customer spending" among the affected vehicles, Dave Filipe, vice president of powertrain engineering, said in a conference call, citing the 2014 Focus as an example.

Ford declined to estimate the cost of the customer satisfaction action, saying that figure would be included in its third-quarter earnings report in October. The company in 2016 estimated that total quality spending related to DPS6 would reach $3 billion by 2020, the Free Press reported. The new cost wouldn't have been factored into that.

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The transmissions, which boosted fuel economy to meet federal standards as gas prices spiked, were introduced in the 2011 model year Fiesta and 2012 Focus. They were used until the Focus was discontinued with the 2018 model year and until the 2019 Fiesta.

Ford says it believed the transmissions were sound when the vehicles were launched and insists the cars have always been safe. It acknowledges that it considered changing the transmission technology and says problems emerged after vehicles were on the road that were more complex and took longer to fix than it expected.

More:Ford responds to Free Press investigation of Focus, Fiesta transmissions

Ford said Wednesday that 2017-18 Focuses and 2016-19 Fiestas have the latest software and hardware, are performing well and don't require the extended warranty. The cars covered by Wednesday's announcement originally carried five-year, 60,000-mile warranties on clutch parts.

Calls for investigation

At least 1.5 million of the cars remain on U.S. roads, according to vehicle registrations. Owners report that many of the cars shift unevenly and sometimes shudder in alarming ways. Acceleration can be delayed, the transmissions can slip into neutral and many owners have reported cars lurching forward unexpectedly. Ford documents showed that, by the end of 2016, 350,000 of the cars “have already reached 3+ repairs in US.”

After publication of Out of Gear, three members of Congress called for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which declined to formally investigate the transmissions in 2014, to re-examine the situation. NHTSA said last month it is examining “all available information, including consumer complaints,” which a Free Press analysis showed total at least 4,300 and include reports of 50 injuries.

NHTSA said Wednesday that its review did not find "an unreasonable risk to safety,” which is the legal threshold for safety-related defect determinations under federal law.

"NHTSA has reviewed recent complaints and other data associated with those issues," the agency said in a statement. "Based on a review of this information, and other information, including severity and frequency, NHTSA has not found evidence of an unreasonable risk to safety. The agency will continue to monitor complaints and other data, maintain communication with Ford, and take action as necessary.”

At the time of NHTSA's 2014 review, Ford approved adding a dashboard warning light to tell drivers the transmission is at risk of malfunction, a move described in company documents as something that “will more easily satisfy NHTSA’s requirements.”

The cars have never been formally recalled for transmission issues. Ford contends that even if the vehicles slip into neutral and lose acceleration on a freeway, as many customers have described, it is not a safety hazard because power steering, brakes and other systems continue working, and drivers can safely navigate to the roadside.

The company noted that, in addition to the clutch warranty extension, all 2011-15 Fiestas and 2012-16 Focuses are covered for 10 years and 150,000 miles for the transmission control module, whose failure can cause the cars to default to neutral. 2008 emails regarding Ford lawyer and engineer discussions about the transmission note that defaulting to neutral is a "fail safe state" if the control module fails.

Jason Levine, executive director of the consumer advocacy group Center for Auto Safety, issued a statement after Ford's announcement Wednesday:

“Once again, Ford is continuing its tradition of using service updates instead of recalls when there are potential safety issues involved," Levine said. "In doing so, Ford knows that fewer customers will get the proposed repair because there is no required notification process and no governmental oversight into how many repairs are completed. And of course, none of this makes whole those consumers who lost time and money by being sold a defective car.”

Ford replied that it “has a long track record of issuing safety recalls based on factual data. ... Further, we are notifying every customer of these changes, publicizing the issue and reimbursing customers that have paid for repairs who are now covered under our extended warranty announcement.”

For customers

Ford said Wednesday it would "make it easy" for customers to get the repairs.

"Affected customers will get a personalized letter from Ford," the company said. "Focus and Fiesta customers with questions can contact a special customer-assistance hotline (833-805-3673) or their local Ford dealer, or visit Owner.Ford.com and use their Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) for information on available updates for their vehicles."

It also said it would proactively notify the 16% of affected vehicle owners who have not gotten the 2015 software update that includes the warning light.

The day after the Free Press investigation was published, Ford offered a one-week repair program, telling dealers in a memo to fix Focuses and Fiestas that customers might bring into dealerships, but not telling owners of the offer.

Contact Randy Essex: REssex@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@randyessex. Read more on autos and sign up for our autos newsletter.

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