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Our Mitsi Outlander 2006 has done 79,000 kms. Last year in October 2011 service my husband asked the service dept to check out a noise he could hear. They assured him there was nothing wrong. The noise gradually got worse and finally in July he took the car back and got them to go with him on a road test. Ah yes they could hear it. It turned out it was the transmission. No Mitsi didn't want to know about it. They have always serviced the car. My husband asked them to look up the records to show he had asked about it last year. No they were in storage. (Actually I was surprised they aren't on the computer.) Mitsi Head Office says a transmission doesn't go slowly. What do they mean, I wonder? There was a noise, but the car was still drivable. However my question is. Surely a transmission should last longer. The repair involved 6 new bearings and the dif v carrier reboring. Is this performance equal to what can be expected of this make and model or should it have performed better than this?

Generally, it would be expected that a transmission would last longer than 6 years/79,000km, however, there will always be exceptions. Unfortunately, the vehicle is now 3 years out of its warranty, hence the manufacturer's reluctance to accept liability.
Manufacturers will sometimes consider out of warranty requests on vehicles up to around 5 years of age if you are the first owner, have always serviced the vehicle with one of their franchise dealers and assuming there's no evidence of abuse etc.
While there are no guarantees that you would be successful, if your circumstances fall within the paramaters I suggest, you could try taking the matter to the Disputes Tribunal (0800 367 6838) to have the matter heard by an arbitrator.