The manual gearbox still has a future, according to BMW. However, this future is not ridiculously long.
Good news from BMW: the brand decides to celebrate the recently announced success of the BMW M2 with manual gearbox. By letting the manual transmission live. Party! BMW believes that the M2 proves that people still want to shift gears themselves in their BMW.
Owed
In return for Top Gear Magazine BMW says that the figures achieved by the BMW M2, M3 and M4 (20 percent of the M3/4s sold are manual, more than 50 percent of the M2s) are enough reason to continue with the manual transmission. “We owe that to ourselves and the fans.” Then we must add that the number of manual transmission BMWs is rapidly decreasing: everything above the M4 has no longer been supplied with manual transmission for a while and in fact the only model – which is not even a 'thoroughbred' M – with a manual transmission is the upcoming manual transmission. Z4 M40i. So it only concerns those four models.
To the end
These kinds of statements are hopeful, but in fact there is already a big thunder cloud hanging over BMW's manual gearbox. And that's because of… themselves. BMW announced last year that the farewell to the manual gearbox is imminent. In concrete terms, the model periods of the BMW M2 (G87), M3 (G80/81), M4 (G82/83) and Z4 (G29) will be completed with the option of manual gearbox or automatic transmission, the successor will almost certainly no longer have a manual gearbox. That probably means before 2030 schluß is for the manual BMW. Statements such as 'the manual gearbox remains popular' are nice, but it does not change the existing strategy.
Automatic to EV
You would expect BMW to replace the manual gearbox with a lightning-fast DCT automatic transmission, but that is not true. After all, BMW also announced that the DCT will no longer return. The manual gearbox is assisted by the well-known ZF automatic transmission with eight gears, which has a single clutch and a torque converter. This should fill the gap until BMW M only releases electric models.
In short: how long the future is for BMW's manual transmission depends on how far into the future you look.
This article BMW: “manual gearbox isn't going anywhere (for now)” first appeared on Autoblog.nl.
#BMW #manual #gearbox #isn39t
