I keep reading, and family have had this problem too of short clutch life on modern cars, where these often mature drivers have sometimes been driving for 30 years or more and never needed a new clutch.

I have no direct knowledge but several things stand out to me from my previous work, car transporting.

Modern clutches are very light, and seem 'soft', this is probably design to make them light to drive, bite point not as precise as cars were years ago, softer materials for smoother drive?

Gearing on some cars seems too high to me in first and reverse gears, leading to excess revs being needed every time you move off.

Engines very easy to stall now again demanding higher revs in order not to stall, but some excellent engines that buck this trend, Aygo 107 C1 in particular though early examples with a small clutch (size increased later) would fail early at around 40k miles.

In the rush to give these cars that necessary ''refinement'' i keep hearing about (DMF anyone?), have they made them so fragile that they are in some cases no longer fit for use.

Drivers, thorny subject this...how come we managed for donkeys years with a bog standard handbrake and a normal clutch, now cars are increasingly festooned with electric parking brakes and hill hold devices, are drivers becoming so incompetent that they can't manage to control their vehicles properly without all this tat.

Indeed most new lorries are now automated manuals from hell, and belive thsi or not from this or next month (should have come in in January but legislation not in place i believe), a HGV driver can pass a test on an auto and that will qualify them for manual box too, quite frankly thats unbelievable enough, but the move to auto boxes seems to have come because far too modern lorry drivers can't drive any more either without destroying their clutches or use appropriate gears, as with many things drivers are increasingly taught to pass a test not to drive a lorry.

Sorry for the waffle, and no help at all to the OP, as usual, Hyundai i20 has been reported regularly as having a short clutch life, quite how Hyundai are performing over this i haven't a clue, maybe there is an improved replacement available.

Edited by gordonbennet on 08/04/2014 at 22:43

This is very interesting. We took my wife's 63 plate i10 to the garage the day before yesterday, as there were small signs of a leak on the drive. I have just picked the car up (18000 miles on the clock). I was told that an input shaft seal had failed, causing a leak into the clutch, which they had replaced. Fortunately, it was all done under warranty, but in over 35 years of driving cars old and new, this is the first clutch replacement for either of us.

We are now wondering whether to get rid of the car before the 5 year warranty lapses , in case this is a design fault and happens again.