It's always a good idea to get a second opinion when facing the prospect of a large repair bill on something like an automatic transmission. Independent specialists who are working on automatic transmissions all the time often have greater knowledge about them than the dealership mechanics who don't work on them every day.

The tyre importers advice is not correct; 45 psi would be too high, even for high speed touring. Use the factory specs as a guide even though the wheels and tyres are not standard. The specs should be found on a sticker on the inside of the fuel filler cap. If for some reason they’re not there I would suggest you run 32 psi front and back for cruising. You could increase the pressure to 35 psi or so if you were driving at high speed for any length of time.

Generally it was always felt that the air-conditioning of European cars wasn’t up to the task for Australia; that was because there wasn’t the demand for powerful A/C in Europe where the climate is generally milder. But when the European carmakers began to move on to the world market and export their cars to places like America where the demand for good A/C is very high they have improved the performance of the A/C systems in their cars. The cars you say have had good air are cars that are typically built for the US market, those you say don’t have good performance are not. A/C systems soak up quite a bit of engine power in driving the compressor and that has a greater impact on smaller engines than big ones, and again the cars you are critical of have smaller engines, so they will also probably run smaller compressors.