If you do find yourself still yearning for the James Dean romance of pressing the clutch, throwing the car forward a gear, and zooming around the bend, you’ll have to look a little down market from your corner Koenigsegg dealer.
In the U.S., BMW offers manual options with its performance-oriented M2 coupe; M3 sedan; M4 coupe and convertible; M6 coupe, convertible, and gran coupe; and several of its lower sedans and coupes. (If you prefer Mercedes-Benz, you’re out of luck in America—none of its impressive performance-tuned AMG line comes in a stick-shift gearbox, and the last stick-shift gearbox it offered at all was in the 2014 SLK 250).
Aston offers several of its Vantage V12 and V8s LINK in manual option form. Porsche still offers its iconic 911, among other models, with a stick. Corvette, Camaro, and Jaguar offer some variations on it as well for U.S. buyers, among other less-expensive brands. (Stick shifts remain more available in Europe, so you could always just look there.)
Automakers say that for those less extreme cars, the manual option services a small band of customers who want to access the technical artistry of using a stick-shift transmission. For them, it’s not about track stats. Spokespeople from BMW, MINI, and Aston Martin, for example, also said it “makes business sense” to produce stick shifts, but they declined to say just how lucrative that is in the United States.
“For smaller, two-seater sorts cars, there’s an appetite for it,” said Aston Martin’s Clarke. “It might not be millions a year, but there is a hunger for it.”
But good luck finding a stick anywhere if your tastes run higher. The days of true supercars bearing stick shifts are long gone—and not to return. Would you ever bring the manual back as either a one-off or a production car? I asked Ferrari’s Boari.
His answer says it all: “Categorically, no.”