I don't own a 626 - yet. I need another car and since I've had a great experience with my Protege, I am considering a used 626. But I've heard that there have been transmission issues with Ford supplied trannys. During what years were Ford built transmissions used how good are the Japan built ones? Are the Japanese units also shared with Nissan (JATCO)?

 

The ford transmission was used in the 94 and later 626 with the 4 cylinder automatic only. Rest of transmissions are non ford related. In reality the fact that is a ford based unit is not the biggest problem. Ford used the same transmission in probe and possible other models with no real issues. Ford has had very few problems with their transmissions because they used an external oil cooler for the transmission. Mazda decided not to use an external oil cooler and thus have had a miriad of problems since. The biggest weakness of this transmission is overheating that ford addressed with the external cooler while Mazda chose to exclude. If you do purchase a 4 cyl auto trans, make sure the fluid is good and not burnt. Then install an external cooler and you will probably have no problems with transmission. 4 cyl manual and both V6 use Mazda trans and have been very good with very few problems. Mazda does use Jatco for supplier but I do not remember all of the models that have them. Japan built transmissions are very good. Very few problems outside the norm

 

From reading several automotive forums, this decision not include the cooler has given rise to Mazda-bashing on the web. Many people seem to feel that Mazda should have issued a re-call and fix the problem rather than just issueing TSB's. I don't know if it was an attempt to avoid bad ratings (Consumer Guide, JD Power, etc.) as a re-call is probably worse than a TSB ratingswise, but it certainly left quite a few consumers with a negative image of the company and its products.