Most of us are able to identify the car brand on the street or at least know what car we own. With automatic transmission, the situation is much more complicated. Often, even repair companies do not know which manufacturer’s automatic transmission is under the car. Why is it like that?
Firstly, because they are not as famous as vehicle brands. For example, have you heard of companies called Getrag, BorgWarner, JATCO, Aisin Seki or ZF? Yet most of the transmissions on cars that drive on Estonian roads come from these factories.
Another reason is that even one and the same vehicle may have automatic transmission from different manufacturers depending on engine power.
For example, the Audi A6 with a C5 body has 5 different automatic transmissions from two different manufacturers and it would be useful to use at least three different oils.
Car manufacturers vs. transmission manufacturers
If, 10 years ago, most car manufacturers offered a large number of automatic transmission parts in their spare parts catalog, they have now abandoned it. The car manufacturer takes the transmission as a single assembly.
It may seem unbelievable, but as modern automatic transmissions are so complex, many car manufacturers do not offer original spare parts, repair instructions, or other necessary information.
The reason lies in economic expediency – the car manufacturer have no point to require from the dealers around the world to train specialists and buy special equipment. It’s all just too expensive and complicated.
Unfortunately, this is also more costly for the final customer, as the car manufacturer offers only a chance to buy a new transmission worth over 5000 euros to a customer in distress. The original transmission oil is also ready for a relatively high price.
Approach based on the transmission
This is also the reason why we do not approach the vehicle manufacturer, but the manufacturer of the automatic transmission in case of maintenance and repair of the automatic transmission.
For example, the Audi transmission is not seen as Audi’s production, but as an assembly of the actual manufacturer ZF, LUK or BORGWARNER.
This, of course, requires a dedicated repair company to have direct contact with transmission manufacturers or at least their representatives/suppliers of spare parts.
All in all, however, it provides better information, technical repair instructions, almost complete spare parts supply and definitely a more favorable price.
