Peugeot ETG5 / ETG6

PSA's automated manual — in the Citroën C3 and Peugeot 208, sold as ETG, 2-Tronic, MCP and SensoDrive depending on the market and the year.

Four names, one system, and that alone sends most searches to the wrong place.

It is a manual gearbox with a robot on it, not an automatic. There is no torque converter, so it does not creep; the clutch is a real clutch and wears like one; and the long pause on the change is the design — the actuator lifting the clutch, changing gear and letting it back in.

Lifting off the throttle as it changes makes it dramatically smoother, exactly as in a manual. A great many complaints about these are answered by driving them as what they are, and PSA's own reputation for them suffered because they were sold to people who wanted an automatic.

The failure that strands one is the clutch actuator and its position sensor — a refused gear, a warning light, a car that will not move, intermittently at first. Replacing the clutch does not fix it, and a genuine clutch change must be followed by a bite-point relearn or the judder returns immediately.

ETG5 is a five-speed and ETG6 a six. Both are the same automated manual idea — a clutch and a shift actuator bolted to an ordinary gearbox — and the complaints they attract are about the actuator rather than the ratios, so the shared page is the useful one.