I have a fairly new 2005 HCH with a manual transission. I'm finding that the shift effort is quite high when I downshift into first gear at anything above a crawl and especially if I'm above 10 MPH. At times, the transmission has balked and I've had to shift back into neutral, slow down and try again. I don't believe that any of my attempted downshifts into first gear would have resulted in an engine speed above 3,000 RPM.

This condition exists when the car has sat overnight and after it has been driven for about 30 minutes so I don't think it's related to the temperature of the transmission fluid.

Any comments are greatly appreciated.