Spend five minutes in the comments section of any automotive site and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the automatic gearbox is a pointless, archaic technology that nobody likes and nobody buys. Should you have the audacity to defend the fact that you own a car that shifts cogs on your behalf, you’ll be immediately set upon by all and sundry with the sort of fervour usually reserved for Westboro Baptist Church members attending a pride parade.
The thing is, if the people of the internet want manufacturers to continue making manual transmissions, they should probably start actually buying them. Lamborghini’s new Huracan model is not available with a stick shift, and the reason is that pretty much nobody bought a manual Gallardo.
At a recent event at Lamborghini’s headquarters in Sant’Agata Bolognese, Italy, journalists were pestering chief engineer Maurizio Reggiani about the absence of a manual option on the new car. According to AutoGuide, Reggiani began to explain how fewer than five per cent of Gallardo owners ticked the manual ‘box option, when CEO Stephen Winkelmann jumped in.
Apparently, that five per cent statistic is out of date. In fact "close to zero per cent of Gallardos were ordered in manual," Winkelmann confirmed. In fact, orders for manual Gallardos became such a rare event, that when one did come in, engineers would contact the dealership to double check the form was correct.
It’s further proof that no matter how much we all cry out for manual shifters, out in the real world, high performance cars aren’t actually more enjoyable with three pedals. Sure, I’d still argue that something like a hot hatch is most fun in manual form, however I believe there’s a 400bhp cut off point where you just start to feel like anything other than paddle-shifters is a waste.
Consumers don’t care about manuals, so we can’t complain when manufacturers ditch them. On top of that, supercars in particular have become so complex that handing shifts over to the driver would mess with other systems. For example, the Huracan offers three settings - Strada, Sport and Corsa - that adjust multiple factors including steering, throttle response, suspension setup and, of course, gearshifts.
Is this such a bad thing, though? With modern manual shifters becoming few and far between, changing gears yourself will become a specialist skill reserved for true enthusiasts. In a few years, when more and more cars take any semblance of skill away from driving, classic cars with a shifter and three pedals will suddenly become even more thrilling.
Source: Carthrottle
