The manual transmission is dead, long live the manual transmission.
Stir yourself. A self-evident fact 15 years ago. Most new cars are now equipped with an automatic transmission as standard. We Europeans are also less fanatical about the whole manual versus automatic debate. How different it is on the other side of the pond.
You have only really lived when you know how to connect, switch, heel-toe and everything else that comes with taking matters into your own hands. In this fantastic proverbial form, the handle is the gear lever. In the United States, glorifying the manual transmission has been elevated to a kind of sport.
Car manufacturers went along with this years ago. For example, BMW, which released manual variants of M models especially for the American market, including the M5 E60.
Sell manual transmission
In 2023, you might expect that the childish fuss surrounding the manual gearbox discussion will be dead in the US. Well no, coupling is still possible king. And the statistics don’t lie either. JD Power research shows that 1.7 percent of all new cars in the US will have a manual transmission by 2023.
That may seem like a marginal number and yes, percentage-wise, it is. This means that 98.3 percent of newly delivered cars in the US have an automatic transmission. The news is that the number of manual transmissions has increased. In 2021, less than one percent of sales in the US were manual cars.
Manual transmission sales are therefore increasing in the US. There isn’t much choice. Cars such as the Ford Mustang, Mazda MX-5, BMW Z4 or a Toyota Supra are indeed available with a stick. These are all sports cars. For a crossover, SUV or pickup, it is almost always an automatic.
Fortunately, they still buy new sports cars on the other side of the pond. This is an absolute rarity in the Netherlands. The ever-increasing BPM makes these types of vehicles unattractive and even unaffordable for a large group.
Would you also consider a manual gearbox for a new car? Or do you leave this to the Americans and just go for an automatic. Let us know in the comments! (through Wards car)
This article Statistics don’t lie: manual gearbox not yet dead first appeared on Autoblog.nl.
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