Transmission Failure

I had been driving this car for about two years from ~120,000 to ~132,000 miles. Since around the beginning of 2010, the transmission had this slip between 2nd and 3rd gear. It was a little annoying and it worried me but I never had anything done about that. There were two times when the transmission would not shift above 2nd (after running for hours) but after turning off the car and starting it again it would run totally fine. Finally, last Thursday when I was in the middle of a two-hour trip, the transmission gave out on the highway.

First, a yellow light with an exclamation point came on. I had no idea what it meant but it was not the check engine light, so I was a bit worried. As I entered the highway, the car was stuck in 2nd gear. I tried accelerating harder to get it to downshift like it normally does but it would not shift. As I accelerated to about 60 mph, the car was at about 6,000 RPM and it suddenly kicked out of gear and stayed in neutral. I tried shifting it into 1st and 2nd with the lever but nothing happened. I turned the car off and on like I did previously but that didn't work. It still acted the same. I had to get the car towed home. My dad drove it a short distance afterwards and said that it drove awful. It wouldn't even shift into neutral or reverse. Well... time for a new car!

Car has been kept in top shape for 11 winters. On Friday Feb 5th at 6:30 PM I got into the Focus to drive home and transmission would not get out of 1st gear. "

This car's transmission failure at 63,000 miles in in excusable and i will be reporting it to my Attorney General. It's useless to me and could cost up to about $ 2500 to fix.

I have been researching it iand it seems quite a lot of the year 2000 Focus have had the same transmission failure. This car should have lasted well into a 100,000 miles.

OKay first of all i would never recommend someone getting a ford in their life again. My car has been nothing but trouble from the time i drove it off the lot. I bought it with 16.7 miles on it and have had nothing but problems. I've replaced the brakes 4 times, windshield once, and i recently got a recall in the mail saying that if the car stalls there could be a problem with the fuel injector. It stated if your problem seemed serious then to bring it in and they would replace it with a new one. When i brought mine in they said that they needed to hook it up to the diognostic system which would cost me around $100. How screwed up is that? So i've been driving my car around stalling at the turn of a corner. Now i go into the mall the other day for a half hour and when i returned to my car my key would not turn in the ignition. I was FURIOUS!!!! I called a locksmith who told me that that is a common occurence with ford focus's. I decided to call the dealership where i bought the car and they said that it is a common occurence but not enough of one for a recall. Now what kind of response is that? So i blew it off and called for more assistence. Finally i needed to get my car out of the Mall parking lot so i called AAA who towed my car from the mall to my house. When I explained to the man what was wrong with my car he told me that AAA get 3-4 focus's a week with the same problem. 3-4 A WEEK I THINK THIS IS A PROBLEM. Yet there is nothing i can do about it. I am so out raged. I just want everyone to know how aweful the ford focus is and i strongly recomend that no one buys one. All they are, are problems and although they are cheap cars you will eventually dump in more money than it's worth. If anyone knows who i could write to about this to make sure i'm heard i would love to know so i can put these people down. I'm sick of these asses thinking they can screw you because they know you don't know about the car of saying that you should have spent more money so your car is covered longer under the warranty. IT'S RIDICULOUS!!!!!