Just got back from the dealer and saw this:
I had to get a clutch disk, pressure plate, throwout and pilot bearings, and a flywheel, all totaled about $1500 shipped. Toss in another $900 for the dealer to install those parts brings it up to about $2400, or about 1/10th the cost of the car after only 6 months and 19,000 miles. The dealer insists I was dropping the clutch, but I just don't drag my car. In fact, in the million+ miles I have logged I have never blown a clutch. The last car I had I got 250,000 miles on the factory clutch and it still gripped fine!
I think Mazda purposely under engineered the clutch to protect the drivetrain. They really should have made that whole subsystem much, much stronger.
Clutches and drivetrains are well understood mechanisms with decades of solid designs available. That they decided to save money or time by not using a robust design says a lot about Mazda engineering and management. I'll never buy another Mazda ever.