Is it bad to regularly park your car on a hill?

Parking on an incline usually won’t harm your car and in most cases it’s fine to do.

However, when you do park on a hill, whether facing up or downhill, you can minimise any detrimental effects on your vehicle’s transmission by ensuring that when you stop, you engage the parking brake before taking your foot off the foot brake.

This will help ensure the bulk of the braking is done by the parking brake and not the transmission.

Leaving the transmission in Park or first gear will provide an added way of locking the wheels to prevent the vehicle rolling away, but it should not be used as the primary method of locking the wheels as it could increase wear rates on transmission components over time.

Also be aware that if the car is facing upwards and is a front-wheel drive (many are these days), extra care should be taken when setting off.

In this position, more of the car’s weight is already transferred to the rear, meaning there’s less weight on the front wheels than usual, so the level of grip the front wheels have is lower.

On accelerating away, even more weight transfers to the rear, which may cause the front wheels to spin more easily, especially on wet roads.