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Six months before the 2012 Ford Focus went to dealers, veteran development engineer Tom Langeland emailed transmission calibration manager George Herr and others with his concerns about the DPS6 performance. (Highlighting added by Free Press)
Court documents

The next February, a month before the Focus went to dealers, Craig Renneker, then acting director of transmission and driveline engineering, emailed Richard Bonifas, a customer service manager at the Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, where the cars were being built.

“The 2012 Focus vehicles equipped with the DPS6 transmission may experience a shudder/shake on start up or when slowing to a stop … ship the vehicles to the dealers with the level of shudder we currently have and continue our efforts towards a permanent resolution ASAP,” Renneker wrote on Feb. 21, 2011. “That’s just my opinion and it’s not a popular one.”

But that's what Ford did.