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After about 6 weeks, I think we've finally got all the issues solved. First, huge kudos to the service crew at The Ford Store in San Leandro here in the SF/Oakland Bay Area. They've gone over the top in working to solve my issues; I could have never expected more from a service group! 1. Twitchy Steering. We never isolated a specific problem for this. We drove 2 other C-Maxes + a Fuzion. The Service Advisor, the lead mechanic and the mechanic all acknowledge the characteristic of the car but could not find or isolate anything. They consulted with Ford through many many emails. They did an alignment, and while nothing was out of spec, he made some small adjustments to tighten up the adjustments. As one poster noted, and I agree, as I've gotten more miles on the car, the problem seems less. The Michelin tires are definitely prone to following the road (Fuzion with same tires does the same thing) and as they wear a bit, may lessen the exaggeration of the problem. I agreed with the Service team to drive the car for a while to see what happens. They've committed to resolve the problem, so if it does not go away or I'm not happy over time, they will make more attempts to solve the problem. They're also hoping as more of these get on the road, if it is a common problem, possibly someone will isolate or solve it. So its just a matter of time. 2. Front Strut rattle. The rattle issue(s) drove us nuts. Turned our there were two different issues. The first, which acted like a front strut rattle turned out to be a faulty sway bar connecting bushing. Ford helped them find the problem. Finally Ford told them to disconnect the sway bar, and the front noise went away. The ordered new strut connector bushings and installed them. That problem took two weeks to solve, but after definitely solved the front rattle. 3. Literally not 15 mins after driving off the lot with the front sway bar issue, another rattle was immediately evident. I drove the car for 2 weeks to be sure the problem was consistent. This sounded much different; like the muffler banging against the car: and in certain conditions banged the car pretty significantly. After 3 days, they found the rear strut upper attachment bolt was loose. (literally a strut rattle this time lol) The nut that fastens the top of the strut to the upper mounting plate was about 4 turns loose. The nut is a Teflon self-locking nut and their guess is the assembly robot thought the nut was torqued down but wasn't. Installed and tightened a new nut and this problem appears solved. Hopefully I'll have rattle free driving now! I'll keep everyone posted if things change or if we get any more insights on the twitch steering. Dale

[update: Fixed! - see post from 7/1/2013] I've never had a car with electric power steering before, so maybe they're all like this, but... Does anybody else find the power steering to be a bit twitchy, especially at highway speeds? It seems like there's a small distance you have to turn the wheel before much happens, then it jumps to the next increment, rather than being a smooth continuous process. So at highway speeds, I keep over-correcting, a step too far to one side then a step too far to the other. I'm probably making it sound worse than it really is, but it gets tiring after a while. At residential street speeds I usually don't notice it.