I've got to disagree with you here, Toasty, but as you say, "I don't care what anyone says," so you can ignore it if you want. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Here goes: The manual tranny in the 2.6s might not be the strongest in the world, and indeed are not equal to their automatic contemoraries, but they don't suck. I put 188,000 miles on my original before having it rebuilt. The rebuild is running fine now, but I don't beat hell out of it, either.

The manual tranny behind the 3.0L is better - no arguement there.

My only point is, don't be scared of the 5sp in a 2.6.