2002 MAZDA MPV User Comment / Complaint

Transmission failure after 5 documented trips to dealer about transmission problems: - car bought 2/2002. - 8/6/02-10,816 - hesitation from start. wife complaining of poor driving characteristics. dealer couldn't verify anything, even that the cel was on. - 2/21/03 - 21,065 - rough downshifting. wife thought tranny was slipping and kicking in. dealer flashed tranny per tsb on the 3-2 downshift known problem. - 8/27/03 - 26,235 - poor shifting. dealer said shift solenoid sticking. flashed tcm again. (not sure what they did to correct solenoid) - 11/19/04 - 41,979 - tranny & torque converter flushed after complaining of poor driving again. note: - contacted mazda corporate about the lack of transmission maintenance in owners manual. mazda said there's no maintenance required! - 4/4/07 - 94,xxx - without warning, no accelerating, car simply stopped moving on the highway. tranny was slipping bad and my wife was nearly killed pulling off the highway! fluid level was ok, color was ok, but it smelled burnt. car required towing. it was diagnosed with total transmission failure. i called mazda usa, who said the car is out of warranty and no assistance will be offered. i called the dealership where it was always serviced, and they said that they've never seen mazda support a car out of warranty like this. i complained to both about how this was a documented problem from new. if i was smart, i would have filed a lemon law complaint and gotten a full refund back then, but they just kept insisting it was a tcm program. i never imagined that the tcm would be able to cause the tranny to physically fail. also, the fact that these trannies have internal, non-serviceable filters is just poor design. lastly, honda has the same issue with their odessy, but they are covering the repairs in full! my friend had his tranny replaced at 88k miles! i'm exploring legal avenues of recourse.