Which Is More Expensive To Maintain: Manual Car vs. Automatic Car

Mercedes-Benz Vehicles Equipped With a Manual Transmission

Mercedes-Benz Vehicles Equipped With a Manual Transmission

Many newbies and even some casual drivers often ask: is it really cheaper to repair and maintain manual transmissions than automatic ones? We have the right answer, and at times get faced with too many questions concerning the maintenance cost between a manual transmission and automatic transmission. That’s why we have this post to answer those once and for all!

What’s the difference between a manual and an automatic car? Let’s begin with the basics – a manual car has a gear system that you operate yourself by moving the gear stick and pressing down the clutch pedal. The majority of vehicles driven in Nigeria are manual. But an automatic car doesn’t need this as one would say it does it itself. We have written a detailed blog to highlight the key differences between manual and automatic cars, ensure you check it out. 

Should You Buy An Automatic Car

Pros

Cons 

Should I buy a manual car?

The majority of motorists in Nigeria still drive a car with a manual gearbox, but how does it compare to an automatic?

Pros

Cons

The manual generally costs less than the automatic in maintenance & repair

First, we will like to directly point out that, manual transmissions are always or usually found to be cheaper in repair and maintenance than automatic transmissions mainly because the automatics are by far more complex and normally possess more parts or functions that can just fail at any time but that really depends on a driver’s driving style though.

A typical automatic transmission would have hundreds of hydraulic, mechanical as well as electronic helpers that usually work together in harmony just to smoothly shift the gears for a driver. Whereas, the manual transmission consists mostly of mechanical gears which just rely on a driver mostly to engage the vehicle’s clutch & shift whenever needed.

Automatic transmission generally costs more to repair & maintain because of its advanced nature

The total cost of replacing an automatic transmission fluid alone can get as high as N60,000 sometimes depending on the type of vehicle and also who is to do the transmission fixes. Manual transmission on the other hand also requires a periodic fluid change, but its cost tends to actually be always half of that for automatics.

We need to also stress that transmission repair costs will vary widely depending on the car and what needs to be fixed.

Cost to replace a manual or automatic transmission in Nigeria

When repairing a leak, the cost might be a few thousand nairas or less, but when tearing apart a complete transmission system just to find the real cause of a problem, more expenses will surely be incurred for that.

This is why some auto repair shops usually recommend just replacing a vehicle’s entire transmission rather than trying a “fix” for its internal problems and then a rebuild – especially with the newer dual-clutch and continuously variable automatics, just because the parts are always difficult to get and the repair know-how is even less compared to the conventional automatic transmissions.

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