Past Automatic Transmissions in Fords

I will be purchasing a 2005 GT with an automatic. I have all the confidence in the world that the auto tranny will be fine. I have a 78 MII Ghia with a V-8 and auto transmission. The car has over 213,000 miles on it and the tranny has been rebuilt twice in its lifetime. It gets off the line just fine (just ask the Corvette owners who decided they wanted to show off and I made them blow smoke)

Seriously, I don't think Ford would install a 5-speed auto tranny if they didn't have the bugs worked out of it.

From my conversation with the Ford rep at the 40th anniv celebration at Nashville, the new transmission performs much better than the current one and is close to the 5 speed in seat of the pants accelleration. However, it may not be as durable and has a lower torque rating than current 4 speed. There was a post from a Ford Mechanic on this or another site who works on transmissions and he said this is has a lot of problems in the Explorers and is totally electronically controlled. He said that Ford has issued numerous recalibrations to band-aid the problems. The design is apparently close to the trans used in the older 4-cyl Mustangs with an extra gear. Of course, Ford may or may not have fixed these problems, but if the past is any indication of the present, I doubt they have all the bugs worked out.

Reduced durability and other issues really concern me, and may delay my purchase of the car until the trans has a proven track record in the Mustang. I don't want a manual trans for daily use. I also want to be able to add a power adder to the car and not break the trans.