I bought my 2005 X-Type Sport 3.0 about a year ago. About 2 hours after registering the car, the drive shaft broke and the aluminum bracket holding the differential snapped. Not sure which one happened first but it wasn't a good day.

Fortunately I bought it from an honorable mechanic and he fixed it. So I got a new driveshaft and differential and chalked the experience up to stuff happens.

Yesterday the bracket snapped again about 50 feet from my driveway. I searched online and I haven't found anything regarding a defect, recall, or even others having this problem. If the problem is the bracket, I should not be alone.

I do remember hearing a bang occasionally when switching gears so that suggests one side broke first. Unfortunately I thought it was just my driving as I never had a car with AWD or this amount of HP. I "solved" the problem by being a little more gentle when I released the clutch.

Any possible idea what could cause this? I do enjoy the car's acceleration at times but I certainly wasn't abusing the car. It does need an alignment (dead center of wheel is at 12:30 when driving straight) but I find it hard to believe this would cause such a drastic failure. The car drove beautifully both in town and on the highway and I never felt anything to suggest something was wrong.

Please help. I'm trying to decide on fixing it again or surrendering and getting rid of it.