Cars you'd buy if you could get them with a MT
 

https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-cul...-need-manuals/

I agree with a lot of these. And it's tragic that the 3er is on that list.

I probably only agree about half of them. Sadly I dont have any interest in the 3 series anymore

I do wish more cars had a cost option to add a manual. In reality, my wife prefers an auto on her daily, so we wouldn't buy a manual wagon or 3er at this point, even if one was offered. If more sports cars had a manual I would have definitely widened my net when I got the Porsche, but i don't know I'd have bought something else at the end of shopping. The 4c is too small and minimalistic, the F-type would have scared me with jag reliability, a new z4 wouldn't have been able to measure up to a used 911, I would have ultimately turned my nose at the American offerings except maybe a c8, which I wouldn't have been able to get until who know when. I would have strongly considered a manual M2 vert.

Corvette.

Supra.

AMG GT.

These are cars I’d suddenly be hot after if they came with manuals.

Hence my tilting at the ZL1 windmill for now.

Yes. To all of this. I do have a troublesome left knee. Is it bad enough to make me miserable with my only car as a manual? I do worry about that. I would risk the weekend/fun car being a manual, but don't think I can go there with my only car. The knee is not likely to get any better, and will probably get worse.

Luckily, you can get the M3 in DCT.

Supra needs a MT option badly. Always thought that alfa 4c should too but it is EOF.

Yep. Although, admittedly, less exciting.

There are so few cars with manuals anymore that the real answer is that I'd consider anything with a manual. Doesn't mean I'd buy it, but I'd certainly give it some thought.

At this point, the more interesting question for me is what happens when I need to replace the M3. Maybe a new M3, but that sounds like $$$$. Maybe something used. But I have zero interest in a high performance ICE car with a DCT or automatic. I just won't buy one.

Accord sport with 6mt?

No longer available. Production ended in December.

Are you sure about that? Granted, I didn't dig that hard, but I can't find any articles saying that, and you can build one on the Honda site.

On another forum, there was an exchange about the Supra that made me LOL.

"The Supra would never have existed if the Camry hadn't been so successful."

"BMW makes the Camry?"

"They call it a 3-series"

Kind of sums up my feelings about BMW these days. :(

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.car...-discontinued/

I disagree with the two Ford 1/2 ton pick up trucks on that list.

I guess if you are never going to tow, or go off road you could argue it needs a stick option. (why does R&T even care about these vehicles?)

Something inside me says that was more BMW telling them that so that did not poach to many sales.

I posted elsewhere that I might have strongly gone that route if it existed. It would have itched both my practicality nature (4 seats in a pinch) and my need for open air (which is why I was also cross shopping the Boxster - although that come down to the ridiculous 981 S GTS used market pricing for a now oldish car).

it didnt sound too exciting from the reviews I read, 6MT yes but paired with floppy stock accord suspension. They should of offered a sport suspension paired with it and front LSD.

This is my general issue with companies not properly catering to our subset of the market. They offer a wagon with an anemic engine then say, no one wanted a wagon... They offer a stick with a garbage rest of the the suspension and drive train layout then say 'no one wanted a stick'.

Offer a wagon with a good engine (THANK YOU MERCEDES, just get your suspension right). Offer a stick on the sportiest models, and offer it at cost + option if you want to. I'd gladly pay more to help cover the cost of certification.

Amen.

Of course, this inevitably leads to the ridiculous situation of not having homogenized global safety standards, but that is sort of a different rant.

Lack of a manual transmission wouldn’t stop me from buying any new car today. If I have to buy a 2021 Camaro, I have to consider to the 10 speed auto the 1LE will be available with for the first time.

Given what driving in the real world is like these days, ascribing to “purity” or some such is silly. Drive by wire, brake by wire, electric steering, electric suspension doodads and every5ing else that makes a modern car a modern car leaves a manual transmission...about as useful as an appendix. Maybe less. Clinging to it is what leads to MAGA.

Modern cars are enjoyable for what they are, and that’s cool. A full on driving experience is better experienced with older cars. It’s more pure, it’s more visceral, it’s more connected (literally with rods, levers, and cables), it’s more fun. It may not be as fast, but it’s better.

Going gaga over multi-million dollar cars that can’t be used in any realistic setting in one post and lamenting the lack of manual transmissions in another is... weird from my perspective.

Bah. A modern car can’t actually do the utility part of being a car any better than a car from 30 years ago.

When I can get a self driving car, I’ll be interested in a new car. Until then, at least old cars are mildly interesting to drive at speeds that have some relation to legality.

Yeah sorry Clyde, but you’re wrong. In a world where all of the interactivity is being deleted, the answer isn’t “well, what good is the last vestige of interactivity, anyway?”

The problem, fundamentally, is that the virtue that ICE cars with flappy or auto gearboxes are chasing is smoothness, being in the right gear, anticipating what the driver needs...and EVs do that better. So if I can’t shift my own gears, why settle for a dim simulacrum of an EV, when I could just buy an EV instead?

I don’t understand sports cars with automatics. I just don’t. It’s stupid. There’s one reason to spend money on a sports car, and that is to have fun driving. An automatic is not fun. Or, more precisely, it removes one more potential fun vector. In a world where fun vectors have mostly dropped to zero, why give up the last one? And if you’re going to give up the last one, do it right and stop burning gas.

Yup. I’ll keep buying MTs until I can’t.

We mostly agree. Newer cars are quieter, more comfortable, and more isolated. That allows them to execute their utility mission better.

As Nick just confirmed, this is wrong.

Whether you’re spewing CO2 from your tailpipe or the coal plant across town to make your car do stuff means as much as whether you pick your nose with your right hand or left. I don’t understand why Tesla owners try to shift every automotive discussion to that topic. Oh, wait, yes I do. It like the recovering addict that tries to shift every discussion about everything to addiction. Except backwards, I guess. But, we’ll just call the red herring what it is, a misdirection to avoid reality.

A manual transmission is not a last vestige of interactivity. It’s a misplaced mechanical chore that served its purpose, but has remained stuck behind in time while everything else got so much better the whole thing kinda sucks because of it.

Here I am behind a fun sucking Escape driver idling off the line after the red light went green. This shifting thing is blast.

Here I am stuck behind another Camry going 32 mph in a 35 zone on a two lane road again. Sure glad I have that manual transmission to interactively, um, interactive myself.

Oh boy, stuck behind three vehicles in a tight echelon left formation all moving at the exact same speed again. That manual transmission sure is coming in handy.

Look at that, no one in front of me...just speed cameras every 50 yards. Shifting myself is super helpful here. Wait, wait, ow the road is clear, no cameras, some nice turns... Hmm, too much power in second gear. Keep breaking the tires loose (because, you know, DSC off motherfucker, because I’m a real driver and don’t need those bullshit nannies). And plenty of fucking flat line characterless torque in third gear to accelerate with punch...but getting to fourth gear is just too fast to be worth it.

This manual transmission thing. Yeah, it just fucking rocks in modern cars!

You’re right. I’m wrong. You convinced me.

Wait. This is my brain. This is my brain after smoking the manual transmission crackpipe for 30 some years.

The manual transmission’s time is over. Desperately clinging to a shifter is willful ignorance of the present.

I would be as guilty as most for overthinking things.

But I know transmission choice is a subjective thing. Like styling. Or brands.

It appeals to me more when you call it an anachronism actually. There’s no logic for a sports car in our crowded first world lives. Why would a manual have anything to do with logic?

Why are handwoven rugs more expensive than machine made?

Why do some people buy handmade anything when 3D printers and robotics are more precise and superior? There are a lot of dumb choices in the world.

A manual seems less dumb than a lot of them at least.

Like lemming says, literally all the arguments you make aren’t against manual transmissions—they are against deriving fun from driving in general, and certainly from any kind of “high performance” or “sports” car. Those are the real anachronisms in the picture you paint.

As for pollution shifting from EVs—I’m pretty sure you know that’s wrong and are just trolling me, but I agree it’s not a necessary point to debate in this thread.

I neglected to include a a few things like clutch delay valves and specific unnatural drive by wire features that work directly against manual transmissions like rev hang, pre-programmed throttle response when approaching stall speed that are the exact opposite of what you want, inability to increase/decrease RPM freely with the clutch disengaged or transmission in neutral.

What I'm saying has nothing to do with logic or railing against anachronisms. It also has nothing to do with sports cars. Up the thread, people are lamenting the loss of manual transmission availability in the Honda Accord.

What I'm saying is that today's cars have become so clinically "good" at everything else that manual transmissions no longer inherently make driving experiences better and that when combined with nearly all real world driving situations, they actively make them worse experiences.

Let's review Nick's statement:

(I would use "reality" in place of "legality" to change the scope's shape, but close enough.)

This is the essence of what I'm saying.

If I want involvement or engagement, if I want to feel a mechanical connection, if I want to be able to enjoy the character of a car's performance delivery, if I want to experience some sort of positive emotion based on the thing I'm attached to in the worst of driving situations, if I want to improve the most mundane driving scenario into a pleasure trip...give me a car made before 2000 (perhaps a handful of stragglers after that) with three mechanically connected pedals beneath my feet and and a stubby shifter under my right hand, because that's where it's at.

Stubbornly clutching onto manual transmissions in modern cars because of what manual transmission used to be and what they used to do for the driving experience is not being contrarian, anachronistic, individualistic, or principled. It's just being stubborn. That is the essence of the philosophy behind a certain acronym that I cannot say at this hour (yes, that's a little bit of a troll, but it's also truthy enough that in your most objective moments, you know is also not without merit).

Pining for manual transmissions in today's crop of new cars is praying to a false god that when answered is answered in a "be careful what you wish for" kind of way.

DBW throttles *can* be quite good. They just usually are programmed horribly from the factory. The E46 and E90 M3s are good examples of this.

Modern cars suck to drive with a manual because, for the most part, they are not designed to be enjoyable with a manual because no one buys them. It's a vicious circle. That doesn't mean that you can't choose to make a modern car that's delightful to drive with a manual. It just means that almost no one bothers.

So, you're right that I wouldn't particularly care about a manual offering in nearly any modern car. There's a reason why I don't own any. But the answer to the statement "all modern cars are absolutely miserable to drive" shouldn't be "give up on the hope that you'll ever get to enjoy driving a new car ever again."

idk. We may just have different opinions on this. I've only ever driven one car that was worse -- meaning less fun to drive, to me -- in its manual incarnation, and that's the Mercedes SLK. In every other circumstance, even in boring cars, even in pedestrian cars, the manual makes the experience more interesting, and I prefer it.

Add to that my belief that if manuals die in "pedestrian" cars they'll die everywhere, and my lamenting the loss of the Accord Sport 6M is totally logical. Plus, even if the Accord Sport has a weak suspension, fixing the suspension is a lot easier than retrofitting a whole new body, and if I want a four door manual, what other choices do I have at this point?

Anyway. It's fine if you don't want to drive a manual boring car. It's fine if you are ok with a (shudder) automatic Camaro. That's cool. I'm not. I don't like those things anymore than I want a big plate of crabs for dinner (ugh). And it has nothing to do with Trump, or MAGA, or whatever.

There are a 4-door few cars still out there that offer a manual:

Crosstrek, Impreza, and WTI
Mazda3
Mini is bringing them back
VW GTI
VW Jetta
Some Audis
A few BMWs
Some Toyota trucks/econoboxes
Probably some others I'm not remembering...

No Audis. No BMWs (as of right now--M3 will change that, in theory).

Sorry, when I said "4 door" I was thinking sedans. As far as I can tell it's just the WRX, Civic Si and Jetta GLI. You're right that there are a few additional hatchbacks with sticks.

+ Civic Sport, Si, Type-R (all 4-doors)

I absolutely agree with all of that. Everything electronic/digital between pavement and skin can be as good (maybe even better?) than old fashioned analog...but they haven't been yet. Many of them seem to be going in the wrong direction, too. Of course, they don't have to, but I think the people that buy new cars overwhelmingly don't want them to be better in the sense of what we think of as "better," so they won't be. And when the rare pieces that are better that pop up...they're so comically expensive to the point they only serve as reminders that it didn't have to be this way.

I'll go out on a limb and say that there was absolutely zero chance you would have bought a new Accord Sport 6M. If you wouldn't buy it, why should they build it? :dunno: To the extent you would have considered it, it only would have been until you could decide which of the many reasons that would keep you from buying the car would be the one to lead with when explaining your decision to anyone else. Maybe I'm wrong?

The modern manuals I've had experience with in recent years have had such major downside in everyday use that I'd be lying if I said they were net positives (if a better than average modern slushie was also available) to the driving experience. And those cars have had performance characteristics that preclude playful use on public roads in all but the rarest of conditions. At best, it's been neutral, but mostly they've been net negative.

For the Camaro specifically...I don't know how much the manual experience of the turbo matches the V8. I don't know if the DBW behavior is similar. I do know that the V8 has enough power that full throttle first and second gear will not be good choices on the street and that third gear will do just about everything well enough that the other five forward gears may as well be decorative. OTOH, I know that an automatic in the Camaro provides a pretty dramatically entertaining, yet controlled, experience at 65 mph when it instantly kicks down a few gears at full throttle to shoot a gap while a manual tranmissioned car need to be downshifted and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait for the gap to open providing a less dramatic and entertaining, yet much more nauseating (due to much a more sketchier and sensitivity to throttle movement while waiting for the gap to open) experience in that very common everyday scenario.

Modern day manuals don't give me anaphylactic reactions like plates of crabs do, but that doesn't make them good. I categorically refuse to accept the premise that a modern car is a better car or provides a better experience just because it has a manual transmission installed because it's no more true than an alternative fact. It sure seemed to up until maybe 15-20 years ago, but it's now clear that was much more an example of correlation than causation. Denying that is a choice to believe what one wants to believe independent of what the facts present.

That's my view.

@clyde: I like your comment about the need to go back to pre-2000 cars.

The best driving experience I’ve ever had was when my 1999 M3 got t-boned and in the interim, I bought a 1991 MX5 Miata. To this day, nothing else matches that car for a great analog driving experience (if you were ever in a rush, that was a problem, but...)

Just wanted to remind you of your Mini Countryman ownership experience...

: pri:

I probably wouldn’t have bought an Accord; I thought about test driving one but then lost my mind and bought the M3.

It’s also true, though, that I’ve made buying decisions with “stick” as a sine qua non. I wouldn’t have bought an E61 auto; I wouldn’t have bought a Countryman auto. I wouldn’t buy an A4 auto. Not sure if/when I’ll be in the market for a mainstream sedan, but if I were...well I guess I could learn to love the GLI?

I don’t expect Honda to keep building Accords, if I and others aren’t buying them. But I lament their loss.

Your point about multi gear lockdown is right, I guess, but does that make up for the times when you feel an elemental connection with the car during a well executed up or down shift? It doesn’t really for me, partly because the chances to shoot gaps like that in my daily driving are basically non existent. And while I hear you on the quality of today’s manuals, it’s certainly not universally true. The M3 is good, and even the 5.0 Mustang has its charms (though smoothness isn’t really one of them).

Ha, yes, Josh—but as much as I disliked rhe Countryman, I disliked the automatic countryman even more!

And I wouldn't have bought the E46 wagon without a stick. But, we're not talking about older cars. And we probably wouldn't agree on the cutoff for old, but you realize that your wagon was built only about six years after mine and you'd need to double and add some time to that to measure the distance between when your wagon was built and today, right?

As you point out re: Countryman, when the automatics are lousy, they're lousy. And, as you also pointed out at the time, when the manual transmission is lousy, it can be lousy enough to admit a mistake and move on.

The Camaro had a no-lift shift trick that was neat, but rarely appropriate since it needed to be floored and above a certain RPM. I look forward to playing with it in a V8 Camaro, but it will be even less responsibly accessible due to power differences. As I said, it's neat, but essentially a useless easter egg in the real world.

That said, the V8 Camaro also has automatic rev matching downshifts. It has to be enabled (I think with each start up) and has two huge fucking paddles on the steering wheel to do it. At face value, I'd rather it not have them, but if the DBW throttle is as wonky as the turbo's and makes downshifting more reliable and consistent, I'll use it because I just don't get any pleasure downshifting for a red light, speed camera, or slower traffic ahead...and there are about 37,000 of those events in-between opportunities for enjoyable downshifts. For upshifts, fighting the car to execute bizzaroly timed shift mechanics is not my idea of fun or making an elemental connection.

I'll take your word that the M3's is good, but everything in real world driving is so far from the car's edges that it doesn't matter. The car is too good for itself to be fun.

This is also why I like the E90 with the taps opened a little bit. The torque curve means that you have to drive it, NA w/ ITBs means that the throttle is super responsive (when programmed correctly), there's no irritating turbo lag like the N55 and B58, and because it's relatively low torque, you get to rev it out.

Stock, the S65 is a little unsatisfying because the exhaust and tune cork it up so much, but fix the exhaust and tune it and yum.

And it's just comfortable enough to meet the minimum threshold for work.