Five problems related to transmission failure have been reported for the 1996 Mercury Sable. The most recently reported issues are listed below.
Car is a 1996 mecury Sable, VIN 1melm50u4ta636032, with a defective transmission. Car would lunge and jerk as car would slow and then re-accelerate (such as going into and out of a curve in town, or approaching a red light that changed to green before the car completely stopped. ) car was first worked on 9/9/1999, at which time the car had 28,156 miles on it. The dealer replaced a sensor under warrenty. The symptons again started occuring about a year later. When serviced on 5/15/2001, the dealer could not find the source of the problem. Finally, the transmission failed in April 2002. The transmission was replaced 4/24/2002 with less than 47,000 miles on the car. The car had an extended warrenty from Ford. At the time of the failure, the warrenty had expired for time (greater than 5 years) but not mileage. However, the car was covered by the warrenty (time and mileage) during both the September 1999 and may 2001 services. Had the fault been properly diagnosed at either time while still under warrenty, my contention is that the transmission would not have failed. I currently have the transmission. The gearing system has notches in the teeth.
Automatic transmission failed.
Control module for transmission failed, causing vehicle to slowly accelerate, also replaced transaxle.
Premature transmission failure.
The transmission failed causing the vehicle to roll out of park and the vehicle will not go over 30 mph because the high gears were broken. Nlm.