Automatic or manual car hire in Malta: which to choose

Of all the questions that reach our desk by email and WhatsApp, “is the car automatic?” is the one a plain yes or no serves worst. So here is the honest answer, the same one we give in person: most hire cars in Malta are manual, automatics are the exception right across the island, not just with us, and whether that matters for your holiday comes down to your licence, your history with a clutch, and how you feel about stop-start traffic on a hill. What follows is not a product page. It is the state of the market as we see it from the handover desk, written down so you know exactly what to ask for, and when.

Why hire fleets in Malta are overwhelmingly manual

It is not a Malta quirk so much as a European one. Manual cars have always been cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain and, for most of motoring history, cheaper on fuel, and hire fleets everywhere are built from the cars ordinary local buyers choose. Across most of Europe that has meant small manual hatchbacks for decades. Malta simply concentrates the effect: the island runs on compact cars because the streets demand them, the importers bring in what sells, the driving schools teach in manuals, and when a hire car is retired it has to find a second-hand buyer in a market that still expects three pedals.

We have been handing over keys in St Julian’s since 1945, and for almost the whole of that time the default gearbox on this island has been manual. That is slowly changing, because hybrids and electric cars are automatic by nature and they are trickling into local fleets, but at this writing Malta remains firmly a manual market. When a hire company anywhere on the island tells you automatics are scarce in August, that is not a sales tactic. It is just true.

Why an automatic genuinely helps here

Having said all that, Malta is one of the places in Europe where an automatic really earns its keep, for three concrete reasons.

The gearstick moves to your left hand. Malta drives on the left, so the driver sits on the right and shifts with the left hand. The pedals stay exactly where they always are, but if you have spent twenty years changing gear with your right hand, that swap is real mental load in the first day or two, on top of roundabouts and lane discipline. An automatic deletes the problem entirely, which is why it pairs so well with the advice in our guide to driving on the left for first-timers.

Hill starts, everywhere. Malta’s village cores were laid out centuries before the car. Steep, narrow streets with a stop sign halfway up are completely normal, and sooner or later you will be doing a hill start on a slope with a car close behind you. Locals do this on the clutch without thinking. If your clutch control is rusty, it is the single most stressful moment of the driving day, and an automatic turns it into nothing.

Stop-start traffic. The coast road through Gzira and Sliema, and the streets around St Julian’s, crawl at school-run time and again in the evening. In a manual that is an hour of clutch work. In an automatic it is just sitting in traffic.

Who should insist on an automatic

If your licence is automatic-only

This is the non-negotiable case. If your licence is restricted to automatic vehicles (the restriction usually appears as code 78 on the back of an EU licence), you must not hire a manual. You are not licensed to drive one, the insurance on the agreement will not cover you if you do, and you would be learning clutch control in live traffic on unfamiliar roads. Say “automatic-only licence” clearly in your enquiry, to us or to anyone else, before price ever comes up.

If it is your first time on the left and you want one less thing to think about

Plenty of first-timers drive a manual here without drama; the left-hand shift takes about a day to settle. But if you are already nervous about the side of the road, removing the gearbox from the equation is a perfectly sensible move, not an extravagance.

If you have not touched a clutch in years

Drivers from North America, and increasingly from everywhere, sometimes have not driven a manual since their test, or ever. Malta’s hills are a bad place to find out how much you have forgotten. Be honest with yourself here: if you have to think hard about when you last made a hill start, treat yourself as an automatic-only driver in practice, whatever your licence says.

Who is fine with a manual

If you drive a manual at home, hire a manual here. The only real adjustment is shifting with the left hand, your feet do not change jobs, and reaching for the door handle instead of the gearstick stops being funny after about the third junction. You will pay less per day, you will have the whole market to choose from instead of a thin slice of it, and the saving over a week covers a decent dinner or two. Our full fleet is built from exactly the kind of small, light cars that make Malta’s streets easy work.

The price and availability reality

Wherever you hire in Malta, three things are true of automatics. There are fewer of them, because of everything above. They cost more per day, because they cost fleets more to buy in the first place. And they sell out first, because the small pool of automatic-only drivers all want the same handful of cars, at the same time of year. In the peak months of July and August they are routinely the first thing on the island to go.

For context, these are our own published rates, per day on a seven-day hire, and they are typical of what the small-car market here looks like:

Category	Car	Low (Nov to Feb)	Mid (Mar, Apr, Oct)	High (May, Jun, Sep)	Peak (Jul, Aug)
A	Hyundai i10	€14	€16	€18	€22
B	Nissan Micra	€15	€17	€19	€23
C	Peugeot 208	€15	€18	€20	€24
D	Citroen C3	€15	€18	€20	€24
E	Hyundai i20	€17	€20	€21	€25
F	Peugeot Partner (7 seats)	€25	€28	€35	€40

Mid season also covers the Christmas weeks. An automatic, wherever you find one on the island, sits above rates like these, and the gap is widest exactly when demand peaks. We are deliberately not quoting a figure for the difference, because it moves with the season and the car, and a number printed in a blog post has a way of outliving the truth. Whoever you hire from, get the automatic’s exact price in writing for your dates and judge it against the manual rate for the same class. If your dates are flexible, that table is also most of the argument for travelling outside high summer; our post on the best time to visit Malta by car goes into the seasons properly.

How to actually secure one

Everything above reduces to a short, boring recipe, and it works with any hire company, not just us.

Enquire early. For July and August, think months ahead, not weeks. The automatic pool anywhere on the island is shallow, and it drains first.

Say “automatic only”, in those words. A preference gets treated as a preference. On our quote form there is an “Anything else?” box for exactly this sort of thing (flight numbers, child seats, extra drivers and, yes, gearboxes); write “automatic only, cannot drive manual” if that is your situation, and the reply will be built around it. With us the form raises an enquiry, nothing more: nothing is booked and nothing is paid online, and a real person answers by email or WhatsApp with the exact price, usually within the hour.

Get it confirmed in writing before you plan around it. If the automatic is the thing your trip depends on, do not book flights on the strength of a phone call. Have the car, the dates and the price in an email first. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and you should hold everyone to it.

And our own position, plainly: most hire cars in Malta are manual, and our fleet is no exception to how this market works. If you can only drive an automatic, say so in your enquiry and book early, and we will tell you honestly what we can do for your dates rather than promise something the summer cannot deliver.

Whichever gearbox you end up with, the rest of the process is the same. A refundable deposit is held on a credit card in the main driver’s name at pickup and released at the end of the hire; our guide to how the deposit works explains it properly. Insurance is included, with the excess and cover options explained before you confirm. The wider mechanics of hiring here, delivery, licences, fuel and the rest, are all covered in our car hire guide.

If any of this describes you, the automatic-only licence especially, start the conversation now rather than in the week you travel. Send your dates through the quote form with the words “automatic only” in the “Anything else?” box, or check availability for your dates first. Either way you will get a straight answer from a person who knows what is actually on the island that week.