Dude, where’s my car?
Ford’s got some pretty big issues on its plate right now, after announcing that some 350,000 cars are affected by transmission issues that could cause parked cars to simply roll away. If this was the answer to the question thrown back and forth between Aston Kucher and Seann William Scott's characters in that film from 2000, we doubt it’d have been able to achieve the cult status it presently enjoys.
Back to the runaway Fords. The affected models include the F-150 pickup, Expedition SUV, F-650 and F-750 pickups, the Mustang sports car, and Lincoln Navigator SUVs, with the aforementioned vehicles using a variety of automatic gearboxes and originating from various plants in the US.
In most vehicles, a clip that locks the shift cable to the transmission itself may “not be fully seated.” As a result, the gear selected by the driver may not be engaged by the gearbox. That means that if you put it in park and shut off the engine, the car might not be in park, and the car could roll away. No warnings or chimes or messages, because evidently, the gear lever being in the proper position nullifies that (try using the handbrake, maybe).
In a smaller number of cars with the 10R80 transmission (like the 2018 Ford Mustang), there could be a “missing roll pin that attaches the park pawl rod guide cup to the transmission case” (no, we don’t understand that either). What we can understand though is that the lack of that roll pin could result in the loss of the ‘Park’ gear altogether, even if indicated by the car itself, again resulting in the car being able to move.
Basically, use the handbrake.
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