Decades ago I was told repeatedly to press the clutch pedal in manual cars for as short a moment as reasonable, since prolonged clutch disengagement leads to excessive wear of the clutch bearing, regardless of make and model. It seemed then that everybody agreed with this.
Now I have a 2016 manual Citroen with rear park assist (ultrasonic measurement with a beeper) which only works when the car is in reverse. Further the car has a sort of hill launch assist (or whatever this is called) which checks whether the car tends to go in the direction of currently selected gear when you release the brake pedal, and holds the car still for about two seconds if it doesn't.
These two features make it necessary to keep the car in reverse even in moments when the old school rule would say to put the car in neutral, for example when reversing downhill into a parking lot (and guess what, my parking lot is in sloped curve and I prefer to reverse into it). I feel that my choice is either to use one of the features my car has and don't actively fight the other at the expense of a potentially expensive wearout of the clutch bearing, or have to adapt a number of aspects of my driving style and preferences to drive the car properly.
My gut feeling is that many issues like urea injectors, particle filters, turbos, catalytic converters or even halogen bulb headlights that required special care some years after they had been introduced, are a solved problem now and drivers don't need to pay special attention to them. I'm wondering whether the same applies to clutch bearings in modern cars.
