BMW's Fastest Cars Won't Use A Manual Transmission For Much Longer
For so many car enthusiasts, driving a car with a manual transmission is a distillation of their passions for all things automotive. Remove the human element, and the facts are pretty simple: stick shifts are slower, less economical, and more difficult to use than automatic transmissions. Moreover, they're hard to justify in today's automotive climate for a litany of reasons, as BMW M's CEO, Frank van Meel, points out. According to van Meel, there simply won't be a way to justify them soon.
van Meel: Another manual will be "quite difficult"
BMW
Speaking to CarSales, van Meel told the outlet that at least from an engineering standpoint, the stick shift just "doesn't really make sense." He assured listeners the brand will try its hardest to keep the manual around for a few more years, but beyond that, things get tough. "From an engineering standpoint, the manual doesn’t really make sense because it limits you in torque and also in fuel consumption," said Van Meel.
"It’s going to be quite difficult in the future to develop completely new gearboxes because the segment in the market is quite small, and the suppliers are not so keen on doing something like that," he continued. "So we’re still happy with the manuals we have and we plan to keep them for the next couple of years, but in future, probably it’s going to be more difficult to keep the manuals alive, especially in the next decade."
Time and technology are the killers of the manual transmission
BMW
Frankly, hardcore stick shift users couldn't care less about reduced power outputs; stick shifts have long been inferior to today's automatics. Emissions, though, are another matter entirely. The US may be well on its way to removing just about every major emissions standard for production vehicles, which could mean stick shifts continue here, but brands that make cars for numerous markets, as BMW does, have to meet much broader global emissions standards to maximize the number of markets they can sell cars in. It's a simple case of the most stringent emissions requirements, usually coming out of the EU, meaning the end of the inefficient manual transmission.
The end of the manual will be twofold, as well. This isn't a skill that people need today. Most cars now use automatic transmissions, and no one wants to work a clutch in traffic. Take rates might be high for models like the M2 (more than 50%, in fact), but those people are largely Millennials or older. The next generation of car enthusiasts likely won't grow up around a manual-powered car, either because it's been legislated away or because the odds are simply stacked against them as the number of available stick shift cars on the market dwindles.