Purchased a second-hand 2002 E2000 van on 9 March 2012. Only had 135000 on the clock. Auto transmission. Purchased vehicle with the intention of using it to go away on wekends, extended breaks, etc. We live in Sydney and decided to take it for a run up the F3 towards Newcastle on 10 March 2012. Good excuse to visit our son who lives in the Toukley area. For those of you who know the F3, we crossed the Hawksbury River and were heading up the big sweeping hill. As the vehicle slowed, the transmission dropped down a gear, and we continued on. Once near the top of the hill, the transmission was "supposed to" go back up into top, but it didn't. I pulled over into the breakdown lane, put the vehicle into Reverse, and moved back a few metres, then put it back into Drive and headed off. Still wouldn't go into top gear. So we had to do the remaining 33 kms to our son's place at around 65 - 70 kms per hour. Needless to say we were creating a few traffic problems. I initially thought it may have been a sensor, because I remember owning an old Kingswood wagon that had the same problem, and it turned out to be this sensor-thingo that broke. A mechanic replaced it, and the vehicle ran trouble-free for the remainder of it's life. But back to the Mazda. When we got to our son's place we called the NRMA. Although we are members, it still cost us $65 for them to come out, because the vehicle had been on my membership for less then 48 hours. Anyway, the NRMA person had a bit if a crawl around underneath, checked the transmission fluid, check the linkages. He found no problems there, but did note that the transmission had probably not been serviced since new, and that the problem was most probably due to the oil overheating. Ended up having to leave the vehicle at our son's place, and borrow his vehicle to get back to Sydney. He took it to an auto transmission specialist on the Monday, and they did a full service on the tranny ($385). Said he had to clean out a lot of sludge. The disturbing part about the whole thing was that the tranny specialist said that there was no gaurantee that it wouldn't happen again (great!!!). He said that we should install an oil cooler ($400 approx). I asked whether that would gaurantee that it wouldn't happen again, and he said no. As stated earlier, we purchased this vehicle to do holidays, and the last thing you need is for something like this to happen half-way along the Great Ocean Road, or wherever. I'd be interested to hear what people think (other than the fact that we're idiots for buying it!!). Thanks.