2005 Mercury Grand Marquis problems
NHTSA has received 635 complaints about the 2005 Mercury Grand Marquis, and 48% of them involve lighting. After that come electrical system (12%) and air bags (11%).
At a glance
- Complaints
- 635 filed with NHTSA
- Most reported
- Lighting 48% of complaints
- Crashes and fires
- 33 and 10
- Injuries and deaths
- 29 and 0
- Typical mileage
- 71,000 miles 507 complaints with mileage
Source: NHTSA owner complaints
Where the complaints are
Share of this model year's complaints by the part of the car involved. One complaint can name more than one part, so the shares can add up to more than 100%.
When problems show up
View the numbers
| Mileage | Complaints |
|---|---|
| 0k to 20k miles | 50 |
| 20k to 40k miles | 53 |
| 40k to 60k miles | 111 |
| 60k to 80k miles | 92 |
| 80k to 100k miles | 84 |
| 100k to 120k miles | 50 |
| 120k to 140k miles | 22 |
| 140k to 160k miles | 32 |
| 160k to 180k miles | 6 |
| 180k to 200k miles | 0 |
| 200k+ miles | 7 |
What the data shows
Among the 507 complaints that report mileage, the typical (median) problem appeared at about 71,000 miles. For lighting specifically, the median reported mileage is about 79,000 miles (262 complaints with mileage).
Safety-related details: 33 complaints mention a crash; 10 complaints mention a fire; 29 injuries reported.
Looking only at complaints filed within five years of the model year (so older and newer years are comparable), the 2005 ranks 2nd most-complained-about out of 21 model years of the Mercury Grand Marquis with enough data (154 complaints in that window). It is also covered by 4 safety recall campaigns.
What owners wrote
A few complaints as filed, shortened and with personal details removed. The first ones are among the most serious reports for this model year; the rest are typical.
Upon starting up 2005 mercury marquis (~24000 miles) and placing car into drive, car accelerated at a high rate of speed and crashed into a gas station pump. The car accelerator malfunctioned and was in a "jammed state". The driver immediately put right foot then both feet on brake trying to get the vehicle to stop. The car would not slow much less stop. Driver suffered very serious eye injury and currently has no sight in injured left eye. There is the risk of losing left eye.
Arrived at son's home and stopped in driveway with foot on brake when vehicle suddenly accelerated uncontrollably, spinning wheels in gravel driveway. Driver swerved to avoid hitting garage and ran head on into a pine tree resulting in severe damage to entire front end of vehicle (expect vehicle to be considered a total loss) and injuries to the driver and two passengers. Both driver and passenger airbags deployed. Prior to arriving at destination, driver had used the cruise control on the vehicle.
As I was driving at night, my vehicle's low and high beams (lights) suddenly cut off. Unexpectedly, the road I was traveling became very dark because I live in rural areas in west virginia. Unfortunately, a second later, my car ran over a small boulder on the side on the road causing a damage (small cracks) at the bottom right hand side of my bumper. Nevertheless, I put the emergency lights on until I returned home right away. Earlier this week, I used the car again without any lights issues.
Car failed safety inspection due air bag warning light on. Diagnosis indicated that the driver's seat belt pretensioner had failed, and air bag would not inflate in a crash. The pretensioner had to be replaced. This seemed like a premature failure, as the car has only 47924 miles. The service desk person at the dealer said that this was very common in mercury grand marquis. I did some checking on the internet and found that he was correct, according to all of the reports exactly like mine.