The most common and most likely answer to this crossword clue is the 9 letter word AUTOMATIC
I've seen this crossword clue in The Daily Telegraph
A
U
T
O
M
A
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C
More clues leading to the result AUTOMATIC
- Gold cat with a twitch that's involuntary
- Unconscious in car
- Natural gold floor covering one put in retirement place reflected
- Shooter Ann flees wounded catamountain
- Subtly act out “I am unconscious“
- Mac accepts it reversed after car operated without intervention
- Type of gun: transport it to Macau
- Will it shoot itself?
- Aim to cut a mix without having to do anything
- Yet someone has to pull the trigger
Buddy explains!

The cryptic/wordplay part
In cryptic crossword there's often an wordplay/cryptic part as well.This part involves a more complex hint, such as an anagram, homophone, hidden word, etc.
Sadly, We don't have an explanation for this specific crossword clue yet.
What does AUTOMATIC mean?
AUTOMATIC noun- A car with automatic transmission.
- A semi-automatic pistol.
- Capable of operating without external control or intervention.
- Done out of habit or without conscious thought.
- Necessary, inevitable, prescribed by logic, law, etc.
- (of a firearm such as a machine gun) Firing continuously as long as the trigger is pressed until ammunition is exhausted.
- (of a handgun) An autoloader; a semi-automatic or self-loading pistol, as opposed to a revolver or other manually actuated handgun, which fires one shot per pull of the trigger; distinct from machine guns.
- (of a local variable) Automatically added to and removed from the stack during the course of function calls.
- (of a group) Having one or more finite-state automata