$6,000 to repair clutch in 2012 Subaru Impreza??

Boy, they think they see a really naive person coming in. A $6,000 clutch repair has me shaking my head that they would even think that such a thing would fly. Why, you can replace an entire automatic transmission (there are four or more clutches in some) for $3,200 and a manual is a bit less mechanically complex. You should be able to replace the entire transmission for about $2,600 or so.

The “thing that holds the clutch” is, as you point out, a rather vague way to say something. I don’t know if the mechanic is referring to the throw-out bearing and related assembly. The throw-out bearing is the part that actually pulls the friction plate and clutch plate apart. The friction plate on on the transmission side of things while the clutch plate is on the engine side. When they are forced together, the car moves. The clutch plate, by the way, is the face of the flywheel assembly that actually controls things. You need the gearing to get your car up to speed and to keep it moving without stalling.

Now, I don’t know of any special magic that holds a Subaru transmission together, unless they have a different style of mojo or something. I haven’t heard that they have double-clutches or some other variety of mechanical complexity. The six-speed is pretty straightforward and standard.

With that said, how can they ask you for double the price of a new transmission to fix the old one? The answer simply is they cannot. The price to fix the throw-out bearing and related assembly is in the $1,200 range, depending on labor. It might be as high as $1,600, but it is certainly not $7,000.