Oddly enough, it all started with a stuck throttle. My wife was driving to work, got off the highway, put in the clutch, 4.5k RPM instead of idle. I had her drive it the last five miles to work. She thinks she had it in third or fourth but I dunno - she said she was doing 30 without touching the gas pedal at 4500 RPM again.
Anyways it was starting to run hot when she got to work, shut it off and it blew up about 30 seconds later. Only thing that makes sense is that the cruise control stuck on since it always went back to 4500 RPM after shifting.
I've had two for almost ten years and never had anything similar happen - quite weird.