[davey]

Simple question and I know there are many knowledgeable owners/drivers here.

I am thinking of buying a car with an automatic gearbox, my previous venture into this ended rather badly. That was with a Peugeot 308 which was rubbish, although voted car of the year.
So what in the collective wisdom of fellow forumites is regarded as a RELIABLE auto. ?

[chevvron]

I had a Mercedes A160 auto for a few years (2003 model not the latest one). Totally reliable with nice clean changes; you could also select each gear individually if you wished.
Having said that I have read that Mercedes autos are ok when they're working but if anything does go wrong it can be expensive.

[davey]

I perhaps should make it clear that I'm in the market for a newish i.e. 3years or so old car not a brand new model.

[KingJames]

Something from the Asian manufacturers in my experience, ideally one of the main ones.

[PeteSpencer]

I've had five auto Volvos and an auto Mercedes in a row and I wouldn't now be without the auto gearbox.
My Mercedes has a 3.2L V6 engine, a 'sport ' mode and I can manually change the gears if I feel boy-racer ish. Goes like s**t off a shovel.

I understand the the Mercedes has a 5-speed auto gearbox and has been pretty reliable so far (100k miles last month).

Never had a problem with the 5 Volvo gearboxes either, One age 20 and 145kmiles is still going strong.

I've been warned off the CVT autos which as I understand it are like the old DAF rubber band on two cones of the 1960s.

Peter

[Rob P]

Key thing is to establish which type of auto box is fitted to the vehicle you are considering

As a huge generalisation you have

Traditional - Used to be known as slush boxes, deliver power to the wheels through a torque convertor. Better than they used to be, but not necessarily the slickest of changes and some impact on economy through power losses.

Automated manual - Just what it says on the tin, a manual style clutch and gearbox but robotised. Yesterday's technology prone to lazy and jerky changes, giving way now to ...

Dual clutch - Use conventional clutches (but two of them) electrically driven. Efficient and often slicker than a manual change

CVT (continuously variable transmission) - As used on the Daf of years gone by - see Mr Spencer's comment - but considerably improved since then. As the name implies the gear ratios aren't stepped but are infinite with no 'changes' to be felt between them. They now feature large on those cars with electric drive Prius, Leaf et al. The sounds can be a bit unsettling at first as they are reminiscent of old-style clutch slip.

Rob P

[cockney steve]

^^^ as Rob P said. In the years I owned a 1-man garage business, I only had 2 auto box failures, 1 being a FWD Cavalier, bought-in with badly slipping innards.....just put a secondhand box and converter in it, -the other was a Volvo 245 estate, the owner had an extremely awkward, steep drive and blew the box....he also fried manual clutches on his various vans......did have another customer with a Triumph 2000 , an odd , intermittent tinkling was traced to a cracked torque-converter mounting -plate which also carries the starter ring gear.. It was replaced, but hadn't actually broken.....so, I'd say reliability is on a par with, or better than a manual box. The CVT boxes have metal belts.....the DAF transmission they were derived from,had 2 giant vee-belts, each about 3 inches wide and one was enough to drive the car........the weak spot was the centrifugal clutch , connecting engine to transmission...they didn't last long in the hills around here, but were, apparently, OK in their native Holland.

[seanxair]

Never had any problems with a succession of VW or Skoda DSG autos. Would venture that the Skoda Superb I had was probably 2nd best car I've ever had. I've had 2 Peugeots and why I had the second one I'll never know. It was about 10 years after the previous one but both were shyte.
Currently Skoda Octavia Scout. Excellent car with bags of space.

[Flyin'Dutch']

Thought I posted this yesterday but apparently not.

Anything from the VAG group with one of their DSG boxes. Silky smooth and more fuel efficient than a manual car.

[morticiaskeeper]

DSG boxes are great, providing you don't tweak the engines. I've known 3 to need eye watering rebuilds where the cause has been put down to engine tuning.

The 500 HP S4 was a bit silly, but the others were mild improvements. The S4 box was rebuilt by an independent specialist and didn't leave much change from £5k!

[Colonel Panic]

Anything from the VAG group with one of their DSG boxes. Silky smooth and more fuel efficient than a manual car.

Can't comment about the mpg, but the DSG gearboxes are amazing. Very smooth.

[PeteSpencer]

'Er indoors' Polo has a DSG clutch:

Amazing to see the gear indicator rack up to 7th gear!

In such a pi$$y little engine!

But its dead smooth and quite pokey for 1400cc.

Peter

[stevelup]

Something from the Asian manufacturers in my experience, ideally one of the main ones.

Not so sure about this... Most (if not all) of the Asian auto boxes are nasty old-school slushboxes with little intelligence and slippy torque converters without lockup. You get the holy trinity of worse emissions, worse MPG and worse performance than a manual.

For a decent auto, you want to be looking German in my opinion (or at least something that uses German gearboxes such as recent Jags)

Here, you will get lower emissions, better MPG and better performance...

[Rob P]

Take care

The BMW eight-speed is still a slush box. The savings suggested would come from the seven-speed double-clutcher.

That said, the OP asked for reliability and it is undeniable that the torque-convertor systems have been around a long time and have developed over the years, there is no significant weakness of which I am aware. Double clutch systems are probably only ten years or so in service, their true long term performance is unknown.

Rob P

[stevelup]

Whilst this might be technically true, the torque converter lock-up eliminates any perception of 'slushiness' at all.

The actual gear changes are sub 200ms and most of the time, sub 100ms, and it can jump from 8th to 2nd in one go.

It's worlds apart from a slushbox.

All the stats I provided were valid for the 8-speed 'slushbox'. If you compare like for like between manual and auto, the 8-speed box offers lower emissions, better performance, and more MPG.