Has anyone else had catastrophic failure with their Mazda3 Transmission? I had it in sports mode, had just started going up a VERY STEEP WINDY ROAD (Sonora Pass from the east), stomped on the gas to pass a Kia which had pulled partially over to let me pass and the car made a horrid clunking noise. The car would still go into gear but would not shift, even if switched to manual mode. The car is slightly over 1 year old and only had 17K miles on it and had never had shifting problems. I drive it aggressively.

Obviously this put me in a very dangerous situation as I was on a narrow two-lane road with poor visibility and very few turnouts. Mazda ended up towing it to reno (90 miles away) and gave me a rental car for the 3 weeks that took to fix it (after they replaced the transmission they found that there was an axle problem and replaced that as well) but then i had to come BACK to Reno (9 hours RT) to pick up the car AND, in the process of getting out of the road with no gearing, no power brakes or power steering, i ended up backing into a snow pole and caused $850 worth of damage to my rear bumper (which, apparently they WON'T pay for).

Rather upset about the whole thing. I'm DEFINITELY thoroughly testing the transmission before the warranty is up. The tow alone apparently would have cost >$1000, not to mention new transmission and axle. Thinking about whether i should get rid of it before the warranty expires (or possibly just get an extended warranty).