Tom, that is a sad, sad story. I'm surprised there wasn't a class action suit against Mazda, but perhaps incidents were infrequent enough to skirt a recall and any resulting litigation.
We bought an '85 Audi 5000 wagon in 1987 or so, at the height of the commotion/recall over unintended acceleration. It was a great deal, of course, and a very comfortable car that didn't give us much grief at all. We put over 100K miles on it before trading it in. Once on a hot day when we swung by to pick up dry cleaning, Dave went in and left the car running while I sat in the passenger's seat and waited. Out of the blue, just sitting there, the car went from idling to super high RPM and then down again. It never did it again. By that time the car had over 100K miles on it. That was proof enough to me that Audi's claims of drivers mistakenly hitting the gas pedal were total BS, and I was vigilant with the car from that day forward.
Getting back to the A/C discussion . . . In the late-ish 80's I rented a Mazda that had the sweep feature on the A/C. I couldn't help but wonder why more car makers didn't offer it, and can't recall if it was possible to shut off the sweep action if you wanted to keep it aimed in one spot.
We got a very small Sharp window A/C unit from Dave's daughter and son-in-law this past April when they moved into their new house, which has central air. The Sharp has louvers that can be aimed but don't sweep, which is perfect for our situation. The two small bedrooms upstairs, one of which we use as our office, can be uncomfortable on hot days and the Sharp can get both of them cooled down with the louvers aimed to direct the air flow across the hallway. This will go down as the most comfortable summer upstairs in the 85+ year history of this house.