THE all-new four-speed automatic transmission is designed in-house, weighs 7kg less than before, is 33mm shorter and is driver-adaptive. It includes both uphill and downhill slope control. The five-speed manual transmission is also improved. The "hill holder", which operates the brakes whenever the vehicle is stopped on a hill to prevent it from rolling backwards, remains a standard feature. The Liberty's automatic transmission four-wheel drive system is known as an "active torque split system" and uses a computer to constantly monitor the driving conditions and distribute torque via a transfer clutch accordingly.

The system can infinitely vary the distribution between 95 per cent front and 5 per cent rear-wheel and is predominantly front-wheel drive during normal road running. In the manual transmission, a viscous coupling limited slip centre differential is used to constantly transmit the engine power to all four wheels.