Car owners spend more than 37 million days between them per year looking for a garage or mechanic to fix their car.

Research by online car repair marketplace, ClickMechanic, puts the figure at 893,461,500 hours..

By the end of March 2016 there were 36.7 million vehicles licensed for use on GB roads – more than 900,000 had registered in that single first quarter of the year.

According to ClickMechanic’s research, men are the greatest deliberators, with 16% of males taking a whole day (8+ hours) to book their car into a garage, verses only 3% of females. And 17% of men confessed to having taken time off work in order to facilitate getting their car repaired.

Of the 1,000 people surveyed, only 23% were likely to get a single quote for the work needed, with 18-24 year olds being the most likely to shop around; almost a third (32%) within that age group said that they would spend time calling multiple mechanics.

Also, 23% of those surveyed had needed to get their car repaired at least twice in the last three years. While over a third (38%) of drivers said that they had their car serviced annually for the last three years, more than a quarter (27%) had only had it serviced once in the same time period.

Availability, price, experience and reputation are areas of consideration for consumers.

ClickMechanic co-founder Andrew Jervis, said: ‘We all rely on our vehicles to get around in the UK, so the problem with repairs is that you can sometimes feel like you’re at the mercy of whichever mechanic can fit you in.

“It’s easy to imagine prices being hiked because the mechanic knows that you need them – very few operate that way, but it can be hard to shake the feeling for some drivers! That’s why so many people spend time shopping around.”

ClickMechanic is an online marketplace for car repair allowing drivers to get online quotes and book a vetted mechanic.