Mazda MPV

bottgers · November 2003

I'll put 'er up on the ramps and see what I can see.

rumor24 · November 2003

It has been sad to hear all the issues we are having. I was so proud to get my 04 only to be let down. I just contacted Mazda thru email and asked them to read the boards here and hopefully it will give them some insight on some of the issues. I expressed the concerns and if they contact me then I will let you know if they are going to help. It would be nice if they would post in all of the forums what they feel, but if I can bridge the gap then so be it. It would be nice if we could show support to them like Toyota and Honda owners show support. Lets see what they bring to the table and hope for the best.

bottgers · November 2003

It's very frustrating when you do as much research as I did (as I know many of you did as well), and make a purchase based on all the info you've gathered, thinking you've purchased one the very best minivans out there, only to end up with a garage full of problems. From all the data I was able to find on the MPV, we all should be doing nothing more than routine maintenance, filling it with gas, and driving it with no worries. I don't understand why we're all having some much trouble with a van that was rated so highly in terms of reliability.

backy · November 2003

Reliability ratings, such as those from CR, are based on the combined experience of many owners. A good rating means that, on average, owners have had a good experience re reliability. But then there are the "outliers", meaning owners who have had really good experiences, maybe no problems at all, and also some who have had bad experiences--meaning lots of problems. Unfortunately, it appears you fall into the latter group. It doesn't mean you didn't make a smart decision, based on all your research; it just means that you were unlucky.

just4fun2 · November 2003

There is an " old saying"...I'd rather be lucky, than good.

tccmn1 · November 2003

Well, on top of all the other tidbits on the MPV, I received my recall notice about melting foglight sockets. Seems that the fogs get too hot and melt the socket and they CAN fall back into the bumper and melt it....sweet! It sounds like the fogs are added at port side in the USA and not installed at the factory. That's a little diff. than US vehicles...not sure why they don't install them at the factory...? I had gotten a little pamphlet with my vehicle explaining the installation process too. Looks like something that I would get in a KC off road set of lights for installation.

Guess I'll be visiting my friendly dealer again...maybe, I'll ask if they got the super fix to my tripping tranny problem!

I don't think the fog light problem is new; I had heard of this months ago when I first got my MPV. It just hit home on top of all the other stuff when I got the notice in the mail.

dtownfb · November 2003

I'm finally in the marke for a new minivan and the MPV is on my short list. I test drove the MPV last Wednesday. It drove nicely and handled well. OUr only concern is the space. We have 2 kids and do travel quite frequenly which explains how we put close to 20k miles no our vehicles each year. The van is fine for 4 people but if we do travel with another person, then the space becomes an issue. Have others had to deal with 5 passengers in the car and the space issue? Other then the hard shifting problem, has there been any other issues that I shoudl be concernend about?

BTW, the improvemnts to the 2004 are very nice.

dan2004 · December 2003

The MPV can handle 5 people easily and I am very happy with the interior and build quality. On the road, the interior is amazingly quiet.

But please do not underestimate the hassle and aggravation the transmission will cause you. A test drive is not sufficient to winnow out good vans from bad--I test drove my 2004 before buying and it took three days for the problem to show up.

My advice: Do not buy a 2004 before the tranny problems are sorted out.

Kirstie_H · December 2003

If you read through the vehicle-specific discussions on these boards, you'll find at least one angry owner of each and every vehicle. In each discussion, we get members who drop in (usually only once!) and post that people shouldn't buy Vehicle Brand X because they're lemons. So, either there are zero good vehicles made, or there are individual lemons in even the best of vehicles.

kirstie_h
Roving Host & Future Vehicles Host

dan2004 · December 2003

That very PC of you Kirstie...

Kirstie_H · December 2003

Not PC at all, just the truth. If you read all of these boards and take every negative comment to heart, you'd lost faith that you could ever find a reliable vehicle. Like reading CR, you have to take the sum of all of the posts rather than dwell on any one point of view, positive OR negative.

It's also based on personal experience. I had a VW Jetta model year that was supposed to be disastrous, and I never spent a penny on it. Good luck. I also had an Altima that was alleged to be reliable, but spent most of its time in the shop. Bad luck.

I'm not saying that the problems experienced aren't genuine - they are. And it's truly frustrating to be "that one," especially when everyone else who owns the same model doesn't report reliability problems.

kirstie_h
Roving Host & Future Vehicles Host

dan2004 · December 2003

The transmission problems on my 2004 are not unique to my vehicle. The same exact problem in now being reported by multiple owners of the 2004. This is more of a systematic issue.

Secondly, Mazda is not particularly easy to deal with over this issue...their first response to me was that "....I would have to change my driving habits..." Of course they know nothing of my driving habits. You have to be really persistant with them (at least in my case) to get them to even acknowkledge the issue.

Why should new car buyers have to play roulette?

tomj5 · December 2003

It's all a gamble. Buying a good car is like finding a good marriage partner...
You get all the information(lift the hood) you can, take a test drive, sort it out, roll the dice and take the plunge...
It's called LIFE..... Ye, gotta love it....

Merry Christmas One and all (Opps, not PC) (snicker)
Tj

pappy55 · December 2003

I, too, am considering an MPV but have the same dilema. It will be difficult for me to transport a family of 5 WITH gear (think holiday trips). I wish they would have 3-passenger seating for the second row rather than the 3rd row. Or at least make the 3rd row 60/40 split. I don't know why mini-van makers only put 2 seats in the widest part of the van, then try to cram 3 in the narrowest part. Doesn't make sense to me.

Other than that, the MPV is high on my hot list.

just4fun2 · December 2003

So, I guess that if you know of the problems going into the purchase of a MPV or what ever, you shouldn't complain about your situation.

These problems are very expensive to repair, not like a squeak or a rattle. What value does this board or CR have if in the end it comes down to rolling the dice?

Pick your vehicle with the problems you can live with.

bsvoller · December 2003

The value of CR is to help determine the risk associated with your roll of the dice. They're far from perfect, but it's the only resource of its kind.

The value of this board is to share information regarding how to best handle issues when they come up.

Note that I specifically didn't include boards like this one for determining reliability/ purchase risk.

You cannot take a survey of complaints on any internet board as an indicator of reliability. Period. This board is not a representative sample of owners or vehicles. As much as we'd all like to take away a sense of peace of mind stemming from other owner's personal experiences, rigorous, verifiable, and statistically valid information about reliability is NOT HERE.

What IS here is a sense of an individual dealer's and Mazda's responsiveness, "tips and tricks" gathered through experience, and information specific to a brand/model/problem that may not be published willingly elsewhere. Information that can be vital to gaining satisfaction from your dealer/maker.

You're playing the odds no matter what you buy. Note that Honda has also had "lots" of tranny issues, and Toyota has had "lots" of engine sludge issues (reported on Edmunds, but more importantly, substantiated elsewhere and ultimately confirmed by changes in policy by those makers, even if they continue to deny the respective issue officially), so it's not just Mazda or any other make we care to single out.

I know this is stating the obvious, but sometimes it's helpful to remind ourselves of the facts...

-brianV

just4fun2 · December 2003

CR is not a representive sample of owners or vehicles either. Only those who subscribe and those who bother to answer the survey is what CR bases its answers on.

If people complain about MPV's transmission problem and Mazda says that they are working on a fix is enough for any reasonable buyer to stay away from them until fixed.

Wise man say, to choose the lesser of the two evils, you are still choosing evil!

bsvoller · December 2003

CR follows accepted market research methodologies for making their sample representative.

In the real-world, no sample you take will be truly representative against all conceivable criteria. You take the best sample available using random methodologies, and weight the results appropriately against a known reference.

I spent 5 years as a market reseacher in a leading research institute in Germany, so I'm familiar with the nitty gritty details.

CR's work is generally sound from a methodological perspective, although their interpretation of individual results is open to debate (as are everybody's).

-brianV

dan2004 · December 2003

Thy will have the data next year.

bsvoller · December 2003

You're right, of course, you can only look at the data from the previous model year, and that's always the case.

However, since the van is basically unchanged from the 2002 model, you can get *some* sense of your risk from looking at prior model years (and that's as good as you're going to do).

Unfortunately, the last time I looked, they didn't have enough data on the '02's or '03's (not enough respondents in the survey that owned MPV's), so CR didn't publish the results for those model years (correctly, I might add, per accepted statistical methods).

So the MPV's reputation for good reliability, excellent in fact, is based on the 2000-01 model as far as CR is concerned, so far as I know.

Those model years had the 2.5l engine and the 4-speed transmission, so you can't really compare them for engine or drivetrain (but you can for pretty much everything else).

As mentioned by others, all you can do is get the best information available, make your decision and roll the dice. I understand that's precious little consolation if you're driving a van with problems.

I guess what I'm trying to say is try not to get down on yourself. You did what you could. Mazda will sort this out as soon as they can.

In a sense, Tomj5's theory that it's contamination is "good news". If he's right, for the cost of a power flush (small hundreds) you should be able to fix this permanently.

Maybe you can push Mazda/your dealer for covering this as an experiment ?

Hope this helps,

-brianV

bigdadi · December 2003

Should we all complain this hard shift of 2nd to 3rd gear tranny problem to NHTSA? I don't know whether this a safety issue strong enough to lead to recall.

I guess Mazda will get more problems if more Ford parts are used in Mazda cars.

bsvoller · December 2003

Might light a fire under them, so to speak...

I'd let NHTSA decide if it's a safety issue.

At a minimum, Mazda could and should be doing more by way of customer communication. Bad things can happen to any make or model. What makes the difference is how you respond to legitimate issues - or not.

Nothing makes people angrier than perceiving that they have a legimate and serious complaint, and the manufacturer just doesn't care. From what I've gathered (our van is fine, knock on wood), I think Mazda and its dealer network are guilty of not responding well.

As to Ford parts, the tranny is a Jatco. The only Ford component is the engine block. I think even the ECM is Mazda's.

-brianV

just4fun2 · December 2003

Yes, you should report these problems to them. I believe it was in last weeks paper that NHTSA refused to issue a recall on the Ford Focus stalling issue. They said that they didn't think that it presented a safety issue. I guess all of the Focus owners are stalling while in the owners driveways.

backy · December 2003

If you like the MPV otherwise but need to occasionally haul gear with 5 people on board, one option is to get a van-top carrier.

frankman · December 2003

I completely agree with brianV. Although, as a prospective MPV buyer, the fact that Mazda can not come up with a solution to fix the tranny problem really bothers me. When the problem being carried over to 04 vans, that really means Mazda really doesn't have a clue how to deal with it. I don't mind to take a chance, if I can only send the car to dealer to get the problem fixed. But the things are, first, it is not easy to reproduce the problem for dealer to acknowledge the issue. And, second, even if they do realize the problem, they have no idea how to fix it. Then what can you do? brianV, I really like everything you said. They make a lot of sense to me. But, I am really having second thoughts on buying a MPV.

lumbar · December 2003

IMO, some relevant (and perhaps unanswerable) questions relating to this transmission issue and its affect on prospective purchasers:

How many MPV's have been sold in the model years affected?

Of that number, approximately how many people have posted here indicating a problem?

What is the likelihood that a substantial number of additional people have experienced the problem but have not found this forum to express their concerns?

And, bottom line, what do we suspect to be the approximate percentage of vehicles in affected model years that have experienced the "hard shift" issue (i.e., how "unlucky" are those that actually have it)?

It strikes me that some discussion of whether this forum presents a -relevant- sample size is significant to anyone considering a purchase of an '04 without more definitive info from Mazda. Is there a significant silent majority out there who have this van and have experienced no tranny problems or should we expect that the problem exists in a high enough percentage of vehicles (say, over 3-5% of those sold) that there's a reasonable likelihood of experiencing it?

subearu · December 2003

'02 ES, no tranny issues. a few minor sulfur smells during months 2-4 of ownership, none since.

there are other sites out there, I know of one such club that I participate in as well.

-Brian

backy · December 2003

Another question we could ask is, of the number of owners of '02-'04 MPVs who have posted here, how many are having the hard shift problem? I think that would give us a better idea of the scope of the problem than comparing the total number of owners to the few who have posted here regarding the problem.

I have to say that I was very close to buying an MPV, but the tranny issue made me re-evaluate that decision. So I've ordered a Prius, to get in line (fully refundable deposit) and will decide in the spring which way to go. Maybe by then the hard shift problem will be licked.

frankman · December 2003

In regards of lumbar's comment, a lot of questions were asked to imply the tranny problem occured in very low percentage of total MPV sold. But nobody really know whether it is just a minor issue. One thing I do know though that I was in a couple dealers in Chicago area. Each dealer has only a few (3~4) 04 MPVs, and none had been sold from either places. As Mazda and local dealers have not spent any effort to promote the 04 and very limited number of MPVs are in dealer's hands, I doubt very much how many of the 04 have been sold so far. Yet, there are people posting tranny problem from 04 already. I don't think it is just some minor issue.

tccmn1 · December 2003

Did not anyone else have this recall or any comments on this issue? I know it's minor compared to the JATCO problems, but it's just another funky thing that can melt your front bumper if you're not careful....
I personally have been requested to do the CR surveys in the past for various things. It's so generic at best for the questions they offer and the applications. By the time your done answering all the questions, your head is spinning and I think the wrong impressions come through. Yes, I like the MPV. No, I hate the tranny and nuisance things that keep coming up.

dan2004 · December 2003

....without transmission problems?

doying5 · December 2003

What is strange to me is that I have been selling these vehicles and never once heard of these problems from my customers. I had a service technicians tell me about it. He said it was a computer issue.
Our store is one of only 20 Quality monitoring dealers in the country. I am not surprised that the other 600 dealers do not yet know how to fix a problem they cannot duplicate and haven't seen much.
The Mazda6 had a big scare on the check engine light at first too. It turned out to be a 20 cent clip on a vacuum hose. But plenty of dealers couldn't figure it out early on which makes owners nervous.

Fact is that Mazda (and the MPV) has had an excellent repair record. As cars become more complex, there is more to sort through to determine the problem. Isn't it the computer that determines whenn the tranny will shift?
That doesn't = bad tranny.

In my 3 years of driving all the model years of new MPV's I have yet to experience any issues.
Give your local dealer a little time to get the answers they need to take care of your problem.

dlmc4 · December 2003

We have already given them a little time to get the answers. The frustrating part is that they have now had alot of time to come up with the fix. My local dealer has known about mine for over 2 months. They knew of the issue even before I brought mine in. So how long has it really been? I didn't expect my MPV to be perfect but a transmission/CPU issue so early on is frustrating enough. Having to wait so long for the answers is the most frustrating thing of all.

jpspeno · December 2003

I've had my '03 ES, with traction control, for a few months and 2200 miles and have not seen the hard-shift problem. Shifting is smooth as silk.

bsvoller · December 2003

Mazda's media site has some of their sales figures here: http://media.ford.com/mazda/news/section_news.cfm?section=80

Sales were very good this year compared to last year, for the record, until July, then they fell off. This parallels what I've seen for some other manufacturers, by the way. Profitability is up so far for the year, for what it's worth (I think you have better odds buying from a successful maker than from one that's struggling, personally.)

I did a quick check, and it appears that they have sold about 60000 MPV's between 01/2002 and 09/2003 nationwide. I'm assuming that all of these have the 5-speed (the numbers are not broken out by model year, so there's a little "fudge" here, but probably not much - some of these units were probably 2001 model year with the 4-speed).

If we take 60000 units sold as "in the ballpark", the number of complaints here and on other boards pales by comparison. 600 reported failures would be 1 percent. I doubt this board has seen even 30 individual cases.

Even accounting for sampling error (the "silent majority" mentioned above), this is almost certainly a rare issue. There is almost certainly NOT a "silent majority" of people with problem trannies - far from it.

As a rule of thumb, mail surveys have a response rate of somewhere near 10% (using a good list, and assuming a whole bunch of stuff that I don't want to get into here...). Even if we assume that for every reported problem here, 9 others exist that have not been reported, and we go with 30 individual cases as above, Mazda is facing a reported failure rate of maybe 0.5%. That would be 1 in 200. Not good, but not unprecedented either as I understand it.

I suspect that this estimate is perhaps a bit high. Even so, that would still make just 300 failures nationwide over 2 years, assuming a reporting rate of just 10%. This also explains why individual dealerships haven't been seeing many of these cases. I don't know how many dealerships Mazda has, but it's more than 300 by quite a bit.

If Edmund's reach is better than 10%, then Mazda's fortunes improve considerably. If the reporting rate is 30% (1 in ~3 failures gets reported here, which *might* be plausible, hard to tell...), then the overall failure rate drops to 0.17%, or 1 in 600, or 100 failures nationwide in 2 years.

Of course, the converse is also true, if Edmund's reach is much worse than 10%, then Mazda has a real problem on it's hands and better get on it. I suspect that truth lies somewhere between 10% and 30% for our purposes here. The vast majority of Mazda's target users have access to the web, if not at home than at work, and most will have heard of Edmund's by now, since they're starting to appear in mass advertising references ("rated so and so by edmund's.com...").

To put this in perspective, Honda acted on their tranny issue (offered extended warranties to all owners) when the reported failure rate climbed well above 1%, as I understand it.

You have to remember that people who have a problem are FAR FAR FAR more likely to report it than people who don't. The overwhelming "silent majority" (99.5% or so) consists of satisfied customers.

I'm not sure if this helps, but there you have it.

-brianV

steveeast · December 2003

I just reported in the problems forum that my dealer has 5 instances of the hard upshift problem from a database with "about 300 MPVs". That's a failure rate of worse than 1.7% given that he couldn't separate the 2002+ from the 2001- models.

Steve.

bsvoller · December 2003

Yes, but it's only one dealer. There are probably many dealers with NO cases.

You have to look at the big picture. You cannot extrapolate from just one data point.

-brianV

bsvoller · December 2003

...we just mounted snow tires on our '03 LX. After much searching and budget adjusting, we went with Kumho KW-11's on 15" steelies. I was hoping to put this off a year, but the OEM Dunlop SP 4000's are about worthless in snow, as we found out during a recent snow storm here. Buying the rims added to the price of admission during a tight time for us...

Since we get very little snow and have quite mild winters in Denver proper, the Kumho's seemed the way to go. They're reportedly laid out for milder conditions and better wear than most snows, but outperform all-seasons when it gets slick. Drive west 30 minutes from our house and you're in another world alltogether.

Picked them up from Tirerack for $470 including shipping. Popped them on last night. They're quiet and handle well in the dry. We'll see how they do in the slick shortly...

-brianV

subyaudidude · December 2003

I've had no problems with my 03 MPV ES. It's only got 850 miles on the odometer, but I've experienced no hard-shift problems at all.

dan2004 · December 2003

So far I've seen posts ony from 2003 MPV owners, not one with a good 2004.

I head they modified the TCM in 2004 in order to fix the 2003 problems.

steveeast · December 2003

I realise that I'm only talking about one dealer. But that's the only hard information I have. If other folks with the problem could contact their dealers and get the equivalent information then the accuracy of the numbers would improve.

By the way, I don't think you can say that "There are probably many dealers with NO cases". Possibly, yes. Probably, no.

Steve.

just4fun2 · December 2003

The problem with numbers is that you can have them come out the way you want by the way you look at them. Until you can get some hard information as to how many people are actually having this problem, then it is only a guesstimate!

Hard shifting be it caused by the CPU or transmission troubles can't be healthy for the insides of the transmission. How long can these transmissions hold up under these conditions? It also maybe shorting the useful life of the transmission.

No matter how you slice it, this isn't good for the transmission and other parts of the van.

Maybe this isn't important to Mazda as long as people keep buying MPV's!

bsvoller · December 2003

The analysis I've provided is based on hard numbers. We now know that there are 60,000 MPV's on the road in this country with the 5AT from Jatco, give or take a few hundred. That's a lot of MPV's.

We also know that there are 10's, not hundreds, of reported cases here at Edmund's and other boards.

Those are the known facts. From experience with comparable reporting methods, we can estimate the reporting rate at Edmund's within reasonable bounds. It's not 100%, and it's probably not 1% either. This is where the uncertainty lies.

By "doing the math", we can get a sense of what the numbers mean if the reporting rate lies in the range that we believe is likely, given our experience with other tools. (I DID spend 5 years conducting large scale international surveys, guys.)

So what we have is not a random "guesstimate" that someone pulled out of their hat, like you pick a Lotto number. It's an estimate with upper and lower bounds, based on the facts available today.

There is a large difference between those 2 concepts.

Anyone reading these boards lately might come to the conclusion that 90% of MPV owners are having transmission issues. The far more likely probability is that this ratio is reversed.

Unfortunately, the same analysis can be interpreted many ways. If you tell someone that 99.5% of MPV's have great transmissions, that sounds good. If you tell someone that the failure rate is 1 in 200, that sounds bad. In fact, both figures are based on precisely the same information and the same assumptions, and have identical levels of uncertainty.

That's where the saying "There's lies, da*n lies, and statistics..." comes from.

Steve, based on my analysis, and the sense that Mazda has something like 600 dealerships (I'm not certain of that number, but I'm pretty sure it's in the ballpark), I can safely say that there are "probably many dealerships with NO cases". We have sufficient if not compelling reason to believe that this is a relatively rare problem.

If you conducted a nationwide survey of dealerships, you could get to a better (i.e. more reliable) estimate of the number of cases out there. You could get the same level of certainty by conducting a nationwide survey of owners. Short of that, you can't.

-brianV

bsvoller · December 2003

What's needed here is for Mazda to step up and get aggressive with customer communication. Everyone that reports this issue should be contacted by a senior customer service rep with the clout to make things happen.

And they should be following up with everybody to be certain that things are happening. If they believe they have identified the problem, then they should be communicating that knowledge proactively.

People don't develop software unless they know what problem they're trying to solve. I would like to know if "we're working on it" means they're still analyzing the problem (they don't know what's wrong), or if they're actively developing a fix (they know what's wrong, but haven't worked out how to fix it). There's a huge difference in those 2 answers - potentially months, the testing cycle alone will take weeks if done properly.

Either way, they need to let people know that 1) their problems are of real concern, 2) a real solution is in the works, and 3) when that solution is expected.

They should also offer everyone affected a free extended warranty on the transmission like Honda did.

If they did those things, wouldn't everyone feel an heck of lot better ?

-brianV

bsvoller · December 2003

If the 2004's have the same TCM and software, then the fact that the 2004's have issues too at this early date (right after the introduction) is essentially meaningless. It's just an extension of the 2003 problem.

If there was a redesign, then I agree, that's not a good sign. Sometimes software "fixes" address one issue and create 2 others... If this has happened, then Mazda needs to look at their testing program hard. They have the resources to do this right. Mistakes happen, sure. But mistakes on top of mistakes shouldn't happen.

-brianV (application test architect at a Fortune 200 firm)

just4fun2 · December 2003

just the results seem hard to understand.

We know that 60K MPV were sold. What we don't know is how many of these people are having this problem and don't bother to go on line here or elsewhere to complain. How do we come up with that number? This type of testing is too thin to have meaningful results in my opinion.

To say that the number falls between 1-100 is too large of an area.

This is like a doctor trying to diagnose a patient over the phone.

bsvoller · December 2003

We know how many MPV's there are, and how many people report problems with their transmissions here.

We don't know how many people don't bother to report their problem here, that is correct. But if we did, we could calculate how many total people have a problem as I demonstrated in my earlier post.

I'm estimating that as many as 1 in 10 people who have a problem report it here, and perhaps as many as 1 in 3 or so. I believe these to be reasonably conservative numbers, and here's why:

I'm basing that estimate on the response rate of mail surveys (about 10%). Mail surveys have a notoriously low response rate. But on the other hand, people are not very motivated to respond to a simple survey, whereas they are very motivated to solve their transmission problems. If you're having a serious issue with your van, know about Edmund's and have access to the internet, chances are you're going to come here and ask questions, no ?

So the limiting factor is the number of people who know about Edmund's, think it's a good place to get help with a car problem and own an MPV with an issue.

How many people know about Edmund's and own an MPV? Well, what kind of people own MPV's? How much do they typically make? More specifically (earnings has bearing on this), how many of them have access to the internet ? How many of them have seen a car ad on TV talking about Edmund's, or have done a search on the internet looking for info and found it that way?

The MPV sells to a fairly saavy crowd of reasonable means who do their homework before they buy and are open to products that diverge from the mainstream (larger mini-vans). They're attracted to it's smaller size and handling prowess. Reliability is important to us. They would be Honda or Toyota customers if not Mazda customers. Most would not seriously consider a DC van for reliability reasons. We're maybe a little more price sensitive than the top-tier of van buyers (Honda and Toyota today). We tend to check CR before we buy. Not every MPV owner fits this description, but most do.

Given that description, we can assume that close to 100% of MPV owners have access to the internet either at home or at work today. Edmund's has worked very hard in recent years to increase their awareness levels (people who have heard about them), and are now being referred to in mass broadcast ad media (TV). And doing an internet search on Mazda MPV is going to lead you here pretty quick.

So close to all MPV owners have access to the internet, and I'm estimating that somewhere between 10% and 30% have heard of Edmund's and think it's a good place to get info when they have a problem.

I've tried to make conservative assumptions throughout my analysis. Perhaps you disagree, I respect that. There is some uncertainty in this part of the analysis. But hopefully you can follow my reasoning now.

Please understand that I'm not trying to make light of this issue. I'm trying to put it in perspective.

Good luck, and stay on Mazda for more information. You have a right to be treated decently and taken seriously, especially if you treat them professionally (hard to do when you're angry, I've been there).

(more than) 'nuff said,

-brianV

bottgers · December 2003

I'd have to say the number of MPV owners having tranny problems is quite a bit higher than 1-2%. If the number was actually that low, there wouldn't be so many people in this forum reporting the feedback their getting from their dealerships (all of which are different), that they are working with Mazda/Jatco engineers to find a fix for this problem. I'd guess 10-20% of MPV owners are experincing these problems. If the problem was only effecting 1-2%, it would be considered osolated problem and they wouldn't be trying to come up with a structured fix from the factory.

frankman · December 2003

I actually think the number from a dealer does mean something. 300 MPVs is a decent number to have some statistics done. And most likely, every tranny affected vans would have complained to the dealer. So, the number from dealer does give a better estimation than numbers based on many assumptions, like how many would have known about edmunds and have posted here. But, I have to say that I never expect to be able to get any meaningful numbers from the forum here. I would try to get ratings from either CR or JD Power (or Car and Driver for fun-to-drive). The forum here gives me opportunity to see what kind of problems MPV owners are facing. Are the problems serious or managable? I also read postings from other models and manufactures. And you get a sense that some problems come and go without making too much impact. You know those problems are pretty isolated cases and nothing really need to be concerned about. But, the tranny issue in MPV has been on and on and on, continuously posted by new victims. I suspect the ratio for affected trannies is probably low or very low. But, the problem never goes away and nobody knows how to fix it. That is the bottom line.

Kirstie_H · December 2003

Sure, it would still be in their best interest to fix a major problem that's only affecting 1-2%. The horrific "Toyota Sludge" issue was also only experienced by a small minority, but Toyota remedied it in the end. Manufacturers do NOT like major problems becoming associated with their vehicles.

kirstie_h
Roving Host & Future Vehicles Host

Mazda MPV

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