Frankenstein’s car: The cost of Britain's most expensive car repairs

Richard Aucock
Fri, 31 Oct 2025

A transmission repair for a frightening £19,400? An engine repair for a scary £15,900? A plug-in hybrid battery repair for a chilling £11,000? 

These are all the colossal sums vehicle warranty and ownership firm MotorEasy has paid out for motoring maladies from some of Britain’s most popular motors.

It has therefore decided to stitch some of the biggest bills together to create a ‘Frankenstein’s car’ that demonstrates the highest costs haunting British motorists.

It drew from thousands of claims and vehicle warranty plans, creating the monstrous motor that cost a staggering total of £78,200 in repair bills.

The steepest was an Audi A7 transmission for £19,400. It was a Range Rover engine that cost £15,900, while a Mercedes C-Class hybrid battery cost £11,000 to repair.

A turbo for a Land Rover Discovery, quite remarkably, cost £10,000, while a smaller Land Rover Discovery Sport required a new gearbox, costing £6800.

That makes the 'mere' £4800 repair cost for a Nissan Qashqai gearbox look almost good value. Albeit relatively.

In an unenviable car firm family feud for MotorEasy, repairing the steering in a car from sister brand Jaguar, the XE, somehow cost £7000.

Meanwhile, an alternator repair for an Audi A7 cost £3200, while an air con fix on a Mercedes-Benz S-Class cost £3000 and a fresh fuel system for a BMW 4 Series was £1900.

"These figures are frightening and not just because it’s Halloween," says MotorEasy founder Duncan McClure Fisher.

"Today’s cars are more advanced than ever, but that means they’re also more complex and expensive to fix when something goes wrong. Frankenstein’s car is a light-hearted way to remind drivers that breakdowns can be scary in more ways than one..."