[swarnava.ch]

While many of the members here are rightly suggesting that a conventional TC gearbox is way better than an AMT, let me highlight that there are not so many options in the small car segment if you go out shopping for a decent auto car at less than 10L price bracket. The one that comes to my mind is Maruti's 4 Speed TC in S-Cross. However, I heard that that may well change and, anyway, it is around 10L as I said earlier. The other option would be to go for CVT like in Honda cars or in Maruti Baleno but then again, the options are far and few. May I please request esteemed members to list out a few options that they see for potential buyers ? I currently drive the Hyundai Nios AMT and I have already decided that it's the last AMT that I will buy, no more. However, there are not a lot of feasible options in the market, I feel.

[Sran]

Due to non usage for extended period of time few unique issues have been seen to come out in light. This one seems to be because of stiffening of seals leading to oil leakage. His AMT had given out much before but it was going on due to daily lubrication. Once that stopped it gave away.

Originally Posted by dipen

Especially in the 5 to 8 lakh segment; the budgets are tightly controlled of all car buyers. The AMT is 50-60k on road more than the MT. Its an attractive lure for the provided convenience which a buyer will try to stretch. However spending a full 1.4 / 1.5 on road more for a TC / CVT than the manual; the buyer may mostly hesitate or choose to move to the next segment (eg. Wagon to Swift) and the likes instead of the relatively expensive auto. So the option of AMT looks fine to me as it also has the minimum compromise on FE as well.

You are bang on buck. At that price point people simply compromise about transmission and upgrade. Most of the first time buyer at that price point do not think about using the car for long highway or outstation drive. They buy car for daily office use or occasional family and function get together. This is also the reason that majority of 10 year old cars of this price segment have low mileage averaging less than 7,000 km/year even while this is the single car in the family.

Originally Posted by locusjag

And yet, inexorably, the AMT is the one automatic transmission type that rolls on and keeps gathering mass in India's automotive market today. The new generation Baleno has ditched its CVT for an AMT. The Hyundai i10 Nios has an AMT, as opposed to the older Grand i10's Torque Converter unit. A decade ago, even the puny A-Star used to come with a reliable torque converter unit but today a similar-sized Alto gets an AMT. This is the trend today, in the lower segments at least. But what worries me is our market's track record of having had the AMT Duster, the AMT XUV 300, AMT Brezza and the AMT Nexon - these are not cars that you buy when you don't have sufficient financial means. And yet all these OEMs were forced to plonk AMTs into these cars. What this means is that this disease has spread up the value chain!

Two reasons for using AMT's in cars that earlier had other AT's. 1. Greed by auto makers to extract every paise from consumer and to devoid them of any satisfaction. If customers need satisfaction then they are forced to jump to higher segment, that means more money for the manufacturer, otherwise they wouldn't have used AMT's in 10 lakh+ bracket.

2. High repair cost of other AT's that insurance companies refuses to pay due to smaller pool of the said customers. Non-insurance customers creating hullabaloo due to high repair cost and bad mouthing the product which otherwise is decent resulting in low sales.

[manojsolanki87]

I own a 2017 IGNIS Amt. It jerks when moving from a stand still during cold start specially in winter season. The service advisor told me to get the clutch assembly changed. It only has 19k on the odo.

Will replace as soon as some affordable electric car lands in the market.

[iron.head]

Originally Posted by GTO

The lamest transmission to ever be sold in India. It's jerky, slow, offers poor performance, overheats on inclines, has way too many issues (see the list of complaints here) and costs a bomb in long-term repairs. We have this 83 grand bill for a Maruti owner, while a Tata Nexon owner ended up with a 71,000 quote.

Seriously, buy a proper automatic! 88% of BHPians said they'd happily pay more for a proper AT over the dumb AMT. In another poll, merely 4% of BHPians voted for the AMT.

Furthermore, a CVT transmission can be taken apart and repaired unlike this AMT scenario where the entire unit had to be replaced. Poor driving experience, lesser life of the transmission, and lesser reliability.

[Contrapunto]

AMT is one of the most frankentein technologies out their- the worst of both worlds in the long term. I always recommend to family and friends that they are better off with a good pre-owned auto (TC/ CVT) that these flaky, failure prone AMTs.

Unfortunately word-of-month advice stand no chance against slick advertisement and pressure from family members who desire a "new" car. All of them ignored my advice of course :-)

[vishy76]

Originally Posted by iron.head

Furthermore, a CVT transmission can be taken apart and repaired unlike this AMT scenario where the entire unit had to be replaced. Poor driving experience, lesser life of the transmission, and lesser reliability.

Would beg to differ. CVT transmissions are a lot more complex than any AMT out there. In the case of this user, the AMT actuator body was replaced and the rest of the GB was more or less left alone. In the case of a CVT, the entire gearbox will have to be overhauled and not many people know how to do it. Dealerships won't even touch the GB. They will replace it entirely.

I do agree that AMTs in general are garbage especially for most enthusiasts including me, but let's not make claims like these. CVT gearboxes have a better reliability record than most AMTs, but they are far more complex and expensive to overhaul and replace.

[Freespirit27]

Originally Posted by RahulNagaraj

Thanks to Jaideep Singh for sending this in. Heartfelt gratitude for sharing it with other enthusiasts via this Team-BHP share page!


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As brought out by @jinojohnt I feel it is more of the replace than repair service culture of most service stations today. More often than not to get the peace of mind of guarantee on repair we tend to go back to service centres. The good old mechanic Bhai or Ustaad is more environment and pocket friendly option provided you can find a reliable garage or SA.

[arungoks]

I am driving a first generation Celerio AMT. Once the car was given for servicing, then in the evening SA called me and said car is not starting they are checking.
I told them I drove the car there, without any issues, so whatever is wrong with it, is their problem. Next day I went to service centre and they said AMT unit is dead and will cost me around 75K to replace it.
I had taken extended warranty, but unfortunately it had expired just a month ago. I made it clear that I will not spend a single rupee to replace it. The service centre then worked with Maruti to replace the unit, zero cost to me.
I asked them to share the bill and on it it was written as 45K for the AMT unit, I had verified the part number from the bill and it was indeed the AMT unit. This was in 2018, maybe the price increased now.

About AMT, as I am a very sedate driver, I don't have the head nod issue which everyone talks about. Only while going up on slopes I struggle with it, but then I learned to manage it with manual mode.

[amit_purohit20]

Originally Posted by Freespirit27

As brought out by @jinojohnt I feel it is more of the replace than repair service culture of most service stations today.

As a part of my job I have to handle warranty issues and can confidently say that the capability of a ASS or FNG to do root cause analysis is very poor. These are places where number of vehicles serviced and money earned out of it is given more priority than reducing the repair cost to be borne by the customer. The targets given to them to increase spares sales goes against the objective of reducing repairs cost to customer.

The personnel lack sufficient information, training, tools and availability of individual spares. ASS and most FNG are not interested in nurturing an individual's capability to do correct root cause analysis and replace only those parts which need replacement. Car companies sell spares at three times the cost of the components, so it's a very good earning source for them. Make a kit and under the garb of preventive maintenance charge more money from the customer.
To ensure quality of service its very easy for ASS to replace the entire assembly (like gearbox) and get more profits for themselves and the parent company. Also it saves them headache of an irrate customer coming back because an incorrect root cause analysis done by the technician. In long term these measures affect the companys sales but in a market where the shelf life of any product is decreasing day by day the car companies are more focussed on churning out new products at a fast pace rather than customer satisfaction.

I personally feel no reason for an AMT to be unreliable like a DSG gearbox or even a CVT. AMT is a mechanical gearbox with automated gear shift and clutch controls. Most Probably the automation part is the problem which again is sourced from outside suppliers. The expertise to repair these lies more with suppliers rather than OEM's, hence under warranty it is easier for car companies to transfer warranty costs to suppliers and post warranty charge exhorbitant replacement costs to customer (read more profit for both supplier and OEM).

AMT might be a poor mans option for TC gearboxes but still they deserve to be made more reliable and easy to repair.

[AutoNoob]

Originally Posted by amit_purohit20

I personally feel no reason for an AMT to be unreliable like a DSG gearbox or even a CVT. AMT is a mechanical gearbox with automated gear shift and clutch controls. Most Probably the automation part is the problem which again is sourced from outside suppliers. The expertise to repair these lies more with suppliers rather than OEM's, hence under warranty it is easier for car companies to transfer warranty costs to suppliers and post warranty charge exhorbitant replacement costs to customer (read more profit for both supplier and OEM).

You have nailed the issue in this case and other cases of AMT failures. To add further, there are two types of AMT actuators in Indian market.

1. The hydraulic type (mostly supplied by Magneti Marelli) - used by Maruti, Tata. These are usually black boxes for OEMs. So, I think, OEM dealerships don't know much to repair these at component level, apart from repair kits agreed with supplier. For any repair that needs bit more than the 'kit', whole unit needs to be replaced. Moreover, it'll take high set of skills for detailed repair, which are usually not available at dealer workshops.

2. The electric motor actuated - used by Renault-Nissan, Hyundai. These have smaller individual components (motors, actuators). These are individually assembled on gearboxes at OEM factories. These are far less complicated, so I think much easier/cost effective to replace at dealer workshop.

Originally Posted by iron.head

Furthermore, a CVT transmission can be taken apart and repaired unlike this AMT scenario where the entire unit had to be replaced.

Originally Posted by Contrapunto

AMT is one of the most frankentein technologies out their- the worst of both worlds in the long term. I always recommend to family and friends that they are better off with a good pre-owned auto (TC/ CVT) that these flaky, failure prone AMTs.

Originally Posted by vishy76

Would beg to differ. CVT transmissions are a lot more complex than any AMT out there. In the case of this user, the AMT actuator body was replaced and the rest of the GB was more or less left alone. In the case of a CVT, the entire gearbox will have to be overhauled and not many people know how to do it. Dealerships won't even touch the GB. They will replace it entirely.

In case of the hydraulic type AMTs, there are three main systems :
1. Actuator
2. Clutch Disc, Clutch Cover and Flywheel
3. Gearbox

In the AMTs, clutch system is the weakest link and usually gives up first due to wear. Next is actuator unit, which actuates the clutch and shifts gears in gearbox. It has different modes of failures : seals, valves, pistons etc.

The gearbox on the other hand is as robust as manual gearbox because they are same mechanically, except for few adaptations for attaching actuator unit. But these adaptations mean the gearboxes can't just be swapped/ converted between MT and AMT vehicles.

[Cresterk]

It took you 7 years to burn out one AMT unit so I don't see why you should sell it immediately after replacing it with out of pocket funds. You are basically giving away a car with a brand new transmission. Would be better to keep it for half as many kms as you initially drove and then sell before it starts showing problems again.

[sunikkat]

Originally Posted by swarnava.ch

May I please request esteemed members to list out a few options that they see for potential buyers ? I currently drive the Hyundai Nios AMT and I have already decided that it's the last AMT that I will buy, no more. However, there are not a lot of feasible options in the market, I feel.

If you stretch your budget to 11 lakhs you also have lower variant of i20 IVT, Kiger CVT. Also Amaze and Jazz are options too, with Amaze being available at 10.
I would say buy AMT only if your budget is strictly below 9 lakhs. Else extend your budget slightly and get a CVT. You will definitely be happy in the long term.

[akhilesh]

Originally Posted by manojsolanki87

I own a 2017 IGNIS Amt. It jerks when moving from a stand still during cold start specially in winter season. The service advisor told me to get the clutch assembly changed. It only has 19k on the odo.

Will replace as soon as some affordable electric car lands in the market.

This won't help. I've got it replaced for this very reason at 10k kms under warranty but the issue still exists. The issue is with cold starts in winters and rains only. It works fine in summers. I suspect and also read somewhere that it is due to moisture build up but I'm not sure

Infact I was contemplating selling my 2 year old ignis delta amt and go for a zeta MT i was getting on spinny for this very issue. AMT is just pathetic

[jinojohnt]

A lot of people have commented in this thread that AMT might cost only 50K extra, but Torque convertor would cost 100K to 150K extra. I feel this is just a marketing gimmick. For example, when I bought my A-Star Automatic (Torque converter), the automatic was based on the Vxi version of the manual A-star (It was actually the Vxi automatic). But apart from the automatic gearbox, ABS was also added (Manual version of Vxi did not have ABS).

The price difference was just 50K (You get Torque Converter gearbox + ABS for an additional payment of 50K over the manual geared version). Assuming that the ABS would easily cost 25K, I should say I paid only around 25K extra for the Torque Converter.
People did not understand the value of the product that time, hence production was stopped (due to low sales).

[swunkjyn]

I think Celerio 1st Gen came with 1st Gen of AMT Gearbox, my Uncle (Chacha) had the Gearbox replaced in his Celerio after driving for over 1 Lakh kilometers in Hilly Areas across Himachal. I can say the roads he and his Son's have been driving on will give ghat sections a run for their money or are a mere cake walk.

So, they were having issues where the "khat" sound would come whenever there were gear changes and there was a lag/delay of a second. They had to cough up 75k plus GST for the replacement and the AMT Geatbox changed was a 2nd Gen, post that change they did update the ECU. I have not driven that car intesively but my cousins are saying that its a lot better than before, even when the car was new. The feedback is that the shifts are more linear but AMT is surely an expensive affair. I dont know if the warranty will cover this expense or not but I wish if AMT is replaced with CVT or TC as they are extremely reliable solutions.