Usually the automatic was an afterthought for the USA market, shoehorned into a space intended for a manual gearbox. The Saab 900 was the posterchild of this. Neat car, but there is a reason there are very, very few auto tranny versions still on the road.

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I found the opposite, mostly just automatic 900s still around, the 5 speed manual in those, particularly in a Turbo is very failure prone. Even my mom's. 50k mi and second gear syncro started to go, bad because she's a super smooth gentle driver, doubt the turbo ever got a chance to spool up in that entire 50k mi :lol:

Personally I've had better luck with manuals, only issues I've had *knock on wood, because my current car's trans is making lots of interesting noises* broken clutch spring, with lots of wear material left, only guess is fatigue from age killed it('74 Karmann Ghia) and I bought a car cheep because the trans was dead, it had been run with no oil. Automatics on the other hand... I've had 75% failure rate(had 4, three had trans failures) so I just avoid them.

back on topic, replacing caps seems to fix almost everything