Transmission started shifting hard into 4th, 5th, and 6th gears. It progressively got worse, especially when it would downshift from 6th to 5th, 5th to 4th etc. to climb a hill or pass another vehicle. Eventually it got to the point it would miss the gear completely and send the RPMs through the roof, and then slam into gear with a big thud that would shake the whole car. FYI, its not good when you go to pass a vehicle on a 2 lane road and have your transmission neutralize (thus no longer propelling you forward) as you are now in the lane of oncoming traffic.

I talked to my transmission guy about it, and called several other shops as well, and they all said the same thing. That it is a really common problem with this 6 speed automatic. They assumed it was the valve body that needed to be replaced, but it could require a full rebuild or replacement of the transmission. We decided to try the valve body first since it was only an $1800 fix instead of $4500. "Lucky" me it worked and fixed the problem, so I only had to put $1800 into the car with 52,000 miles on it instead of $4500!! There is no reason why a car with this low of mileage should need expensive transmission work done.

The curious thing is that when this happened almost a year ago I found TONS of complaints all over the internet about this common problem. Now I can hardly find any mention of it at all anywhere?? Do complaints expire off of this site?? or other sites? All transmission shops know it as being a notorious problem for this transmission, and I think people need to be warned.