Transmission Clunk

[MrBrady]

Has it always been like that or is this something new? Since none of us can drive your car we have no feel for how much it is slowing. I've had cars that seemed to coast forever, others that felt like you hit the brakes.
Perhaps you can get someone from a transmission shop to drive it or another owner of the same model to compare it with.

Spot on! I'd really like to find somebody else with the same setup to cross compare. For additional background, I took my car to the dealer for the "dragging" feeling, but also because when going about 30 mph (like in traffic), it is not easy to smoothly modulate the throttle b/c it feels like the car subtly rocks forward and backward, almost like an inexperienced stick shift driver. Unfortunately I couldn't repeat that during the drive with the service manager. The car is out of warranty now anyway (78k miles - bought it used with 8k miles) and has acted like this since about 20k miles. Took it to the dealer twice and both times they said it's "normal".

Is why people put on the rigid collars? I don't know if that would fix it or not.