Actually to be fair, the gearbox should not have such a short lifespan due to design issues rather the problem lies with us driving in the city. In europe, ppl drive on autobahns or freeways which span for a rather large distance with minimal start stop traffic, of cos if you are working in the city, it will somewhat affect the lifespan of the gearbox too due to start stop conditions just like Singapore.
Have anyone noticed when U r accelerating along and just about to change up to the next higher gear, the car in front of U stops or slows down alot, U release the accelerator just as suddenly and the gearbox will change up with a jerk as the gearbox is confused. This is one of the major contributing factors to the short lifespan of the gearbox.
There are similar cases of gearbox failures just like us whether be it in the U.S or Europe, but if anyone notices a trend Geographically, then it would mostly happen to people who drives in the city areas very frequently where there are alot of stop start traffic.
There will however be another group of people who lives in the same countries but standby their cars and say, Nope, my car travelled 250,000 miles with not a single issue and no ATF change too! If you look at this particular group of peoples' location, you would notice that hey they are actually located more on the outskirts or the countryside where miles and miles of unobstructed roads are at their disposal.
When we talk about Jap cars, as the Japs are living in densely populated areas like tokyo and the likes, the designers design their gearboxes suited for start stop conditions therefore jap cars seem to have lesser problems with their gearboxes even though they have countryside with miles of unobstructed roads as well.
Of course I'm stating this from my own point of view and just purely my own tots and opinions. Key to this is to find the root cause of failures rather than pressurizing the manufacturer to keep replacing and replacing the gearbox under warranty. If we are able to submit some form of feedback to car manufacturers, hopefully they are able to identify issues with their cars in different countries and driving conditions and cater their systems to cope with these conditions. This will save manufacturer lotsa $$$ in the long run and we as the consumer will be happy as lesser problems, lesser downtime, the happier everyone is.
Just like the HPFP issue in the U.S for 335i, BMW keep replacing and replacing pumps but I do not know for sure did they study what was it that went wrong or someone along the line simply wasn't doing his/her work properly.....
Helpppppppppppppppp..............
