Nothing about losing power steering removes your ability to steer. The rack is connected to the wheel by a mechanical shaft, and it was connected before power assistance existed.
What changes is how much force it takes, and by how suddenly.
| Model years | Complaints describing lost assistance |
|---|---|
| 1995-1999 | 943 |
| 2000-2004 | 1,970 |
| 2005-2009 | 5,374 |
| 2010-2014 | 5,863 |
| 2015-2019 | 2,610 |
| 2020-2024 | 664 |
The 2005-2014 window holds 11,237 of the 17,760 total. That decade is exactly when the industry moved from hydraulic assistance to electric.
Two systems, two failure shapes
A hydraulic system is a belt-driven pump, a reservoir and a rack. When it fails it usually leaks, and a leak is gradual. The steering gets heavier over weeks, whines when cold, and the reservoir needs topping up. Every one of those is a warning.
An electric system is a motor on the column or rack, a torque sensor and a control module. It does not leak. It works at full assistance until the module logs a fault, and then it works at none.
Same outcome, completely different approach to it. The hydraulic system tells you for a month; the electric one tells you at the moment it stops.
Why the peak faded
Complaints fall sharply after 2015 — 2,610 for 2015-2019 and 664 for 2020-2024. Two things drove that.
Early electric systems were first-generation hardware doing a safety-critical job, and the sensors and modules improved. And manufacturers added degraded modes, so a fault now frequently reduces assistance rather than removing it, which keeps the car controllable and produces a warning light instead of a complaint.
Newer cars are not immune. They fail more gracefully.
What it feels like at speed
The counterintuitive part is that road speed is the easier case. At seventy the wheels are barely turning relative to the road, so the unassisted effort is manageable — surprising, not overwhelming.
The hard case is slow manoeuvring, where a rack without assistance requires genuine physical force. A car that lost assistance on the motorway and drove home fine will be close to immovable in a parking space.
The danger is the transition rather than the state. Assistance disappearing halfway through a corner means the input you are already applying suddenly does much less than you asked, and the correction has to be immediate.
What to do, and what to check
Both hands, grip firmly, slow down gradually. Hard braking while fighting an unassisted rack transfers weight forward and makes the car harder to place, which is the opposite of helpful.
On a used car, the check is a slow full-lock turn in both directions in a car park, listening for whine and feeling for any point where the effort changes. On an electric system, also note whether the steering warning light illuminates and extinguishes properly at start-up — a bulb removed to hide a stored fault is not unheard of.
This category has produced recalls across several manufacturers, so a free VIN check on the specific vehicle is worth the two minutes.
Frequently asked questions
What happens when power steering fails?
The steering keeps working — the rack is mechanically connected — but the effort multiplies several times over. At parking speeds the wheel becomes very hard to turn; at road speed the change is smaller but arrives without warning, which is the dangerous part.
Why did power steering complaints peak on 2005-2014 cars?
That is when the industry switched from hydraulic to electric assistance. Reports for those model years total 11,237 against 2,913 for 1995-2004. Early electric systems introduced a new failure mode: a control module or torque sensor fault that cuts assistance instantly rather than degrading it.
Is electric power steering less reliable than hydraulic?
It fails differently rather than more. A hydraulic system leaks and gets progressively heavier over weeks, which gives warning. An electric one is either assisting or not, so the same fault presents as a sudden change with no preceding symptom.
What should I do if the steering suddenly goes heavy?
Grip the wheel firmly with both hands and slow down gradually rather than braking hard — weight transfer while fighting an unassisted rack makes the car harder to place. Pull over when it is safe. The car is drivable at low speed but parking will take real physical effort.
Denis Kataev is a serial solopreneur and the founder of ForCar. With 15+ years in software engineering and 10 years in SEO, he builds data-driven products end to end — backed by a sharp eye for design. At ForCar he mines proprietary vehicle datasets, turning raw numbers into buying advice you can actually trust.
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