Erik, I think Isuzu is a great truck company, and they would not have risked their reputation on a bad tranny on a halo vehicle like the VX. Too much was at stake. Granted, a manual shift would have been a better choice for off road use but for all- round performance the OEM automatic was just about right, and I have 158K on my Astral with barely a hiccup. Maybe switching to synthetic helped me, but still, 75k interval rebuilding seems a bit excessive.