Ford Transmission Settlement: Payouts, Buybacks, and Filing

The Ford transmission settlement is the resolution of Vargas v. Ford Motor Co., a class action worth at least $77.4 million covering roughly two million 2011–2016 Ford Fiesta and 2012–2016 Ford Focus vehicles equipped with the defective DPS6 PowerShift dual-clutch transmission. If you owned or leased one of these cars and had repeated transmission repairs, you may be eligible for cash payments, a discount certificate toward a new Ford, or a full vehicle buyback through arbitration. The revised settlement received final court approval on March 5, 2020, and took effect April 7, 2020.¹²

Who Qualifies

The class includes all U.S. consumers who purchased or leased a 2011–2016 Ford Fiesta or 2012–2016 Ford Focus fitted with the DPS6 PowerShift transmission.³ Both current and former owners are covered.

Benefits are tied to a time-and-mileage window: seven years or 100,000 miles from the date the vehicle was first delivered to a customer, whichever comes first.² Because these are model years 2011 through 2016, most of those windows have now closed or are closing based on the delivery date of the specific vehicle.

Personal injury and property damage claims are not covered by this settlement.³ Neither is Ford’s newer 10R80 10-speed transmission used in F-150, Mustang, Expedition, Ranger, Transit, and Lincoln Navigator vehicles from 2017 onward; that dispute is a separate, pending class action.⁴

What You Can Get

The settlement provides three main types of relief, and eligibility depends on what kind of transmission service your car received.

Cash for Hardware Replacements

If a Ford dealer replaced transmission components — clutches, output shafts, or full assemblies — three or more times on your vehicle, you qualify for escalating cash payments. Payments start at $200 for the third replacement and rise with each additional replacement up to $575 for an eighth. Total cash is capped at $2,325 per vehicle.⁵

Instead of cash, you can choose a vehicle discount certificate worth twice the cash amount toward a new Ford, capped at $4,650.⁵

Cash for Software Flashes

If your transmission control module received multiple software updates at a dealer, you can claim $50 per flash starting with the third update, up to a maximum of $600.⁵

Vehicle Buyback Through Arbitration

Owners whose cars still malfunction after repeated repair attempts can pursue a full repurchase. To be eligible for the buyback path, you must have taken the vehicle to a Ford dealer for transmission repairs at least four times during the original five-year, 60,000-mile warranty period, and the vehicle must still malfunction.⁶ Ford pays for the arbitration itself.⁷

Car and Driver reported that Ford agreed to repurchase eligible Fiesta and Focus vehicles for up to $22,000 each under this process.⁸ Through the end of 2019, Ford had already paid $47.4 million in buybacks, and the settlement guarantees a minimum of $30 million more in cash payments across the other claim categories.⁷

Arbitration can also be used to seek reimbursement for out-of-pocket clutch repairs or for warranty claims a dealer refused.⁷ And if you tried to have your transmission fixed but a dealer turned you away and told you the vehicle was “operating as intended,” you can still qualify for a cash payment by submitting a sworn declaration describing what happened.³

How to File a Claim

Claims are handled by KCC through the official settlement website at fordtransmissionsettlement.com, or by phone at (844) 540-6011.²

To file, you need repair documentation showing the VIN, dealer, date of service, and description of work performed, along with proof that you owned or leased the vehicle and a signed declaration under penalty of perjury.⁵

Deadlines depend on when the repair happened. For repairs performed on or before the March 5, 2020 final approval date, claims had to be submitted within 180 days of approval. For repairs performed after that date, you have 180 days from the date of the specific repair to file.⁵

Approved cash payments are sent by prepaid card. If you already filed and want a status update, the claims administrator can be reached at ClaimUpdate@FordTransmissionSettlement.com.² The underlying case is listed as terminated on the court docket, but the claims process itself continues to operate for repairs within the eligibility window.⁹

The Defect Behind the Settlement

The DPS6 PowerShift is a six-speed dual-clutch automatic Ford developed with supplier Getrag. It uses two dry clutch packs, one for odd gears and one for even, aiming to combine the fuel economy of a manual with automatic convenience — roughly a 10 percent gas mileage improvement was the target.¹⁰

Owners reported a consistent set of symptoms: shuddering and vibration when accelerating from a stop, harsh shifts between first and second gear, hesitation, slipping, jerking under acceleration, and in some cases the transmission dropping into neutral while the car was moving.¹¹ Related failures included the transmission control module, actuator motors, and the primary shaft seal, whose leaks could contaminate the clutches and cause overheating.¹⁰ Ford issued more than 20 technical service bulletins over the life of the affected models attempting to address the problems.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration received at least 4,300 owner complaints and reports of at least 50 injuries linked to the transmissions. NHTSA never required a formal recall; in August 2019 the agency concluded the vehicles did not pose an “unreasonable risk to safety” and declined to act further.¹²¹³ The class action is the primary avenue of consumer recovery.

Common Situations and What They Mean for Your Claim

A few practical points follow from how the settlement is structured.

You need dealer records. The claim form requires repair orders showing VIN, dealer, service date, and work performed.⁵ Independent shop invoices don’t count toward the hardware-replacement and software-flash payment tiers, though out-of-pocket clutch repairs can be raised in arbitration.⁷

You still qualify if you no longer own the car. Former owners are part of the class, and the revised settlement specifically extended statutes of limitations and repurchase standards to them.³

The three-repair threshold is per component category. Hardware replacements and software flashes are counted separately, each with its own payment schedule.⁵

The buyback path requires the four repair visits to have happened during the original 5-year/60,000-mile warranty. That threshold cannot be met with post-warranty visits.⁶

Before you file, pull your dealer service history, check the vehicle’s original delivery date against the seven-year/100,000-mile window, and count your qualifying repair visits by category. Those three numbers tell you which benefit tier applies and whether the buyback arbitration route is open to you.

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Ford PowerShift Lawsuit. Settlement Agreement
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