The Manual Transmission Is Dying, But Here's Why It Absolutely Shouldn't
Yes, they're as rare as a crowded library, but there's nothing like a manual.
Last fall, on a writhing mountain two-lane on a perfect SoCal afternoon, I braked hard for a tight left-hander, blipped the throttle twice with my right foot as I worked the clutch with my left and the shift lever with my right hand, and clicked off two quick downshifts before squeezing back on the gas as the 2019 Mazda MX-5 RF convertible howled toward the next turn a quarter-mile ahead. And right then it hit me: This heel-and-toe thing, that clutch pedal, the six-speed stick…man, I haven't used a manual transmission in almost a year.
Given the number of cars we drive annually, going almost 12 months without stirring a shifter by hand says a lot about the near-dodo state of the manual gearbox. At our 2019 All-Stars competition, the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, Hyundai Veloster N, and another Miata RF were the only entrants that showed up bearing row-your-own shifters. A few months before that, I'd driven a new Ford Mustang GT convertible, and it, too, had a manual gearbox. Aside from those, there was nothing with a clutch pedal in my driving logbooks until 2017, when I found a Porsche 718 Cayman and a Nissan 370Z. Looking into an automobile's cockpit and finding three pedals is as rare as a crowded library—unless, of course, you're transporting your Fender Stratocaster and have also brought along your wah-wah.
Three-pedal transmissions may be the film cameras of the auto world, but the manual-versus-automatic debate remains as heated as ever among driving aficionados. For the purists, there is no transmission but a manual. Shifting with anything else—a slushbox, a dual-clutch automatic, a CVT—is "cheating." Never mind that one of the purest of all makers, Ferrari, abandoned manuals entirely nearly a decade ago (mostly because computer-regulated gearboxes eliminate warranty repairs necessitated by, say, accidentally downshifting into second instead of fourth). Never mind that among buyers of the purebred Porsche 911 sports car, barely one in five opt for a manual. Never mind that of the manual cars I mentioned in the second paragraph, each one but the Miata has a "rev match" feature that "cheats" by doing the all-important throttle blip (the "heel" in "heel and toe," even though you actually use more of the side of your right foot) during downshifts. Never mind that even our own resident pro hot shoe, Andy Pilgrim, has told me, "When I'm lapping a track with a great dual-clutch gearbox like the Porsche PDK, I don't even bother with the shift paddles behind the wheel. The computer executes the upshifts and downshifts perfectly, all by itself." Never mind all of that, because I can still hear the purists all the way from here: "Cheater!"
But here's the thing: I get it. My first car, a well-used '63 Volkswagen Bug, was a manual, and for more than 40 years now I've been driving manuals, dutifully practicing my heel-and-toe work, quickly catching first gear on steep inclines before my car rolls backward, shifting synchro-free crash 'boxes up and down in single-seat race cars, and adoring the man-machine collaboration that only a stick shift can provide. Learning manual gearchangery truly is like riding a bicycle. Even after nearly a year of my left foot just sitting there against the dead pedal while driving, I slipped into that Miata RF and took off with zero rust. And I savored every minute of that glorious afternoon zipping through the mountains "the old way."
