Renaissance of the manual transmission?
11/13/2015
Anyone buying a new car today, especially if they are looking in the fast sports car segment, will hardly find (or choose) a car whose gears have to (or are allowed to) be changed manually. The Ferrari 488 Spider, for example, has a dual-clutch gearbox, as does the Porsche 991/911 GT3. Even an Alfa Romeo 4C cannot be shifted by hand.
Of course, there are tangible reasons for this and it was probably what the customers wanted, because logically a DSG shifts faster, more perfectly and why wouldn't you want to drive the way Vettel and Hamilton do in racing, namely automatically?
But there is a counter-movement and it is taking place in the auction room. There, neo-classic cars such as the Lamborghini Murcielago or Ferrari 599 have recently been fetching higher prices if they have the classic splitter gearbox.
And of course there are good reasons for this, because only the manual gearbox offers the ultimate intervention in the mechanics and this intensive integration of the driver into the technology. And in the long term, it could very well be that a "manual box" causes significantly less grief and problems than its modern successor. And since they are becoming increasingly rare, they are all the more desirable.
In the everyday car, the automated gearbox will sooner or later replace the manual gearbox, but in the classic car of the future, you should think twice about which option you choose if you have a choice ...
