Vauxhall gearboxes rarely give trouble, so I can only imagine the makers are considering ways of improving their profit.

Why make a gearbox that is twice as good as the crap engine?

Also their habit of buying in very reliable Aisin-Warner automatic transmissions and converting them into short life components by riding roughshod over the manufacturer's maintenance recommendations doesn't do them any favours.

Aisin's: "Fluid change biannually".

GM: "Filled for life with our snake oil".

Keeps the fleet buyers happy by reducing the servicing bills over fleet life, but every man jack of the things start to slip clutches like crazy at around 7 years old. By that time the fluid's beyond redemption and the filter's utterly knackered. As Aisin's design the filter to last the life of the 'box, with regular fluid changes removing most of the crud, it's not externally accessible.........

GM take engineering cost cutting to extremes.

It's about the only engineering they do well in my view..

The worst gearbox I have ever experienced was the so-called Easytronic semi-automatic in a 2009 Corsa. I hope that has been improved since then - anyone know?

That was a Fiat gearbox from GM's short-lived tie-up with Fiat - even Vauxhall fans stayed clear of that one!

Mercedes have produced a semi auto box for years without problems or do you mean a manual one with loads of servo motors.