Used automatic cars for sale

For cars that have the option of both a manual and an automatic gearbox, the latter will almost always cost more to buy. In addition, carmakers sometimes don’t offer their least expensive engine options with an automatic, so you might need to pick a pricier version of the car you’re looking at to get the option to add an automatic gearbox.

While prices vary from car to car, automatics can also cost a small amount more to insure than an equivalent manual car, and their fuel economy might be slightly worse in the real world.

Nevertheless, for many buyers, those penalties are worth paying to get the extra convenience of an automatic gearbox.

In the bad old days of sluggish, lazy automatic gearboxes, these models would use a lot more fuel than their manual counterparts. This isn’t the case anymore thanks to modern automatic gearbox developments, with little to no fuel economy penalty compared with a manual-equipped car.

Put simply, yes. Automatic gearboxes are primarily intended to make driving easier by eliminating the need to shift gears yourself and removing the clutch pedal entirely.

If you’ve never driven an automatic-equipped car, it can feel a little strange at first because the car wants to move as soon as you start lifting off the brake pedal. However, you’ll very quickly get used to it and, within a few miles, will be wondering why you ever drove anything else.

In the UK, if you pass your test in an automatic car, you’ll be granted an automatic-only licence. This is a full driving licence but will only permit you to legally drive automatic-equipped vehicles. If you want to drive a manual car, you’ll need to retake your test in a car with a manual gearbox.

As a general rule, automatic cars can’t stall and will not roll backwards if you take your foot off the brake on an incline – assuming they’re in full working order.

Some older auto gearbox designs, such as those used in the mid-2000s by Citroen and Peugeot, were known for rolling a little before the computer would wake up and catch them, but these have long since been abandoned and, if you’re shopping nearly new cars, you won’t encounter any of these varieties.