It is a sad day, if you like driving. If you liked (past tense) driving Volkswagens with manual transmissions. Because Volkswagen just announced it will no longer be selling any VWs with manual transmissions beginning with the 2027 models. The very last VW you can still buy – for the next few months – that is available with one, the 2025 Jetta GI, will go automatic-only after the end of the current calendar (and model) year.
So much for fahrvergnugen – the pleasure of driving.
Does anyone remember?
That word was once VW’s motto. But that was a long time ago and times have changed. Even the Golf R – VW’s highest-performance car – is already automatic only; so also the GTI. Do you (does anyone?) remember when the GTI was sold only with a manual transmission? This was a long time ago, too. Times changed and the manual became optional, which is probably why almost no one who is over 35 refers to a manual transmission as a standard transmission. This was once the case, generally – and not just in sporty cars like the GTI but all economy cars and most pick-up trucks, too. You paid extra to get the optional automatic, if you wanted to – but you didn’t have to. A consequence of this was that economy cars – there are no such things anymore – were inexpensive because automatics added cost. Today, there are entry level cars – no doubt you’ve heard the term. One never hears about economy cars anymore because – again – there aren’t any.
This includes models like the first generation GTI, which was a fun little economy car based on the Rabbit (as it was called before it got renamed the Golf). It was fun, in part, because it was economical and it was economical, in part, because it came standard with a manual transmission and that plus a pepped-up engine and some suspension upgrades was all it took to create a fun little economy car. The base price of the 1983 GTI – ’83 was the first year of availability in the United States – was $7,990 and that works out to about $27k in today’s debauched dollars. The current, automatic-only iteration lists for $34,590 to start. Yes, the ’26 is a “nicer” car. It comes standard with AC and power windows and locks and a good stereo and many other things that were either optional or not available back in ’83. But the take-home point is you no longer have the option to buy an inexpensive, fun little car because the GTI is now an expensive performance car. It performs better, certainly. But that is meaningless if you can’t afford the performance.
There is also less fahrvergnugen for the money. Some might say none at all. Automatic-only cars are fundamentally boring cars, an assertion easily proved to be true by driving, back to back, examples of the same car with a manual and then an automatic transmission. The only people who prefer the automatic are people who don’t really get the fahrvergnugen concept. It does not mean they are bad people or even bad drivers.
But it does mean they don’t get it.
VW no longer does, either – apparently. But VW also has to deal with European regulatory rigmarole that is more onerous than American regulatory rigmarole. Over there, the EV push remains as unrelenting as it was here, pre-Trump. The government – the regulatory bureaucracy – does everything it can to make it harder and harder to make vehicles that aren’t EVs and car companies like VW know that, in short order, they will only be allowed to make EVs. Or at least, only allowed to sell EVs in the European market – which for VW and other German brands such as Mercedes and BMW is the market. So, they are gradually winnowing everything in their lineup with even vestigial fahrvergnugen so as to acclimate the sitzpinkling Germans to a future in which there is no fahrvergnugen.
Eliminating the manual transmission – even as an available option – is a necessary part of this because there isn’t all that much difference, when you think about it, between an automatic-equipped transportation appliance and an EV, other than the transportation appliance being capable of transporting you farther and not making you wait forever to get going again. They have largely stifled the fahrvergnugen out of the engines – even the powerful ones – by applying a bevyy of electronic controls that parent the driver and via acoustic covers that deaden the sound such that, in many of these appliances, it is difficult to tell whether there is an engine under there, somewhere. Even if you lift the hood. There’s a sheet of black plastic. May as well be a battery under there.
A manual demands attention – literally. It requires the driver to drive. That is what fahrvergnugen is all about and that is what’s officially going away, forever, from VW showrooms beginning just a few months from now.
. . .
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Americans are to lazy to shift the gears
Wèll, looks like we’ve had a good run y’all…
All cars are just glorified Johnny-Cabs now…
I think i hear “Red Barchetta” somewhere in the distance….
Rode my ‘standard’ transmission motorcycle to work all week. Fun
5.29.26 YNET. About 120 Vehicles Consumed in Fire at Unofficial Parking Lot Near Jordan River Crossing. About 120 vehicles were consumed in a fire at an unofficial parking lot near the Jordan River Crossing by Beit She’an. Ten firefighting teams are operating at the scene. The fire began in an open area and spread due to weather conditions and terrain toward a nearby vehicle parking lot.
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/lrral3rpa
5.6.26 Israel not equipped to put out electric vehicle fires, Fire and Rescue Commissioner says. When lithium-ion batteries enter thermal runaway, the fire can only be contained, not stopped, explained Israeli Fire and Rescue Commissioner …The risks increase in underground parking garages. As these fires cannot be extinguished, the garage can quickly fill with dangerous smoke, potentially trapping people trying to get to their cars.
Similarly, in an elevator, if the lithium battery in an electric bicycle or scooter catches on fire, it takes only 17 seconds for the elevator car to fill with smoke and become a death trap for all inside.
The same can happen in train cars. Caspi noted that Israel Railways had begun an advertising campaign encouraging passengers to charge their electric bikes and scooters on trains, but the IFR shut it down because the risk of thermal runaway increases during charging.
“Going forward, the IFR will publish an updated procedure for handling electric vehicles to prevent the public from endangering themselves in futile attempts to extinguish fires caused by thermal runaway in lithium-ion batteries.”
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-895003
I miss a stick shift for towing a trailer. Not so much in stop n go urban traffic.
“and via acoustic covers that deaden the sound”
I never understood the guys who add sound deadening mats to their classic cars. When I drive my classics, I want them to feel and sound like they are supposed to. I want to be transported back to a better time of freedom. I want to hear the sounds and feel the road.
Modern cars are sensory deprivation tanks.
Same situation with the guys who rip out the chassis and plug in all new modern suspension and steering components. If you ask me, it makes the car fake and gay. It appears to be a classic car, but look closer. Drive it. It’s not.
I’ve done both original and chassis swaps, as well as adding power steering to things like 49 Ford trucks. If its driven a lot the upgrades are worth it and not visible. Trust me, the Armstrong steering loses its charm VERY quickly in low speed maneuvering. But there is only so much noise you can lose, door and window seals bjare hard to improve.
To each his own.
The manuals are dying primarily because of idiotic emissions standards that drive engine design.
A friend of mine said about guitar that it takes 90% effort to get to 90% mastery, but it takes the same amount of effort to progress through the remaining 10%.
As Eric has said repeatedly, you can program automatics much easier to pass these ever-stricter emissions tests than a manual.
Another part of this are the distractions of modern life such as phones that have been transplanted into modern cars with those awful screens jammed in the middle of the dash.
Our overlords don’t want us to have the freedom of movement because we’re “eaters” in a malthusian sense that need to be culled. The safety pyschopaths can’t imagine someone have any fun behind the wheel.
Hence the war on enthusiast cars and cars in general. It makes one want to weep.
I’m really unsure of the regulations being the only reason. I see no interest from most people in rowing their own gears.
Cars _are_ an appliance for most people. We car enthusiasts are the odd ones out.
In the past, all cars were enthusiast cars, because these various technologies didn’t exist, so everyone was forced to do what we enjoy. Without that forcing, it seems most people choose “appliance” over “car”.
Regulations certainly make R&D more expensive, so there’s less upside for a car company to cater both to the appliance buyers and car buyers.
Manual Transmission is called a Thief Deterrence Device. A little thug jimmies the door, jumps in, hot wires the vehicle to start it up and suddenly realizes……”Crap! There’s 3 pedals, I have no clue how to drive a stick shift”. Thug bales out and goes off to find an easier vehicle to drive.
My first “vehicle” was a manual. 1960 Ford Tractor and I was driving at age 11. There was no fahrvergnugen in a Ford Tractor. It was STHU and get the job done. LOL
I had to do a bit of searching. For I remember reading the story of a would-be-car thieve who shot the owner of said vehicle to be car jacked, because the stupid fool (robber) could not drive a standard transmission. No, the car will not get stolen, but the owner of said vehicle could end up dead because of a dumb robber who could not be bothered with doing his homework first. https://abc7chicago.com/post/carjacker-kills-father-because-car-isnt-automatic-transmission/1797152/
‘He who would live must fight.’
Or in the original,
“Wer leben will, der kämpfe also.”
Taped to lower margin of my computer monitor for many years now.
Fraktur type face, naturlich. 🙂
True. I can say that gout and a manual tranny is “fun”…
Should have been below Ernie’s comment at the bottom.
The Last
ManualVWWe may get the privilege of seeing the last VW, sooner rather than later. Massive losses from the epic buffoonery of Scout Motors could be the shiv to the stomach that takes it down. 🙂
Macroeconomics plays out in slow motion, as new moons supplant full ones and vice versa. In fact, “F. Joe Biden’s” destruction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline on September 26, 2022 was the death knell for German manufacturing. As ol’ Edgar Cayce remarked of its passengers, after balking at entering an elevator which proceeded to plunge to its doom, ‘I saw that they had no future.‘
Eighty years under the talmudic jackboot of yankee occupation has produced an intellectually stunted Germany characterized by learned helplessness. The lessons the krauts think they learned from the wreckage of WW II are the wrong ones. Though they can’t articulate it, like many societies facing irreversible decline, Germans are contemplating collective suicide.
‘He who would live must fight. He who doesn’t wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist.’ — Adolf H, Mein Kampf
I was among those “jackboot occupiers” watching young German men being emasculated as older generation watched in silenced horror. They were so brainwashed by the filths lies and propaganda by 77 they destroyed their own society. It was horrible to see it going down the drain while they played along like good cattle. That broken pipeline was Germanys spine. Game set match for psycho.
Read an article the other week where a European auto analyst said manual gearboxes will be mostly gone from the Euro market by 2030. He also thinks diesel is not that far behind. Not sure I think it’ll be that quick over there but I’m sure it will happen.
https://www.dailymail.com/money/cars/article-15833625/Manual-gearboxes-extinct-2030-diesel-engine-wont-far-behind.html
The sad thing about eliminating manual transmissions is that it lowers safety!!
You can drink, text or eat a ham sandwich while driving but not with a manual transmission as you need to use both feet and arms to drive.
Perhaps if GovCo was serious about safety it would ban automatic transmissions. Do it for the children.
Actually I’ve committed all those sins while driving a manual, but it definitely requires a higher skill level and more judgement. While actively clutching and shifting, I.e. in traffic or attention requiring conditions, eating that sandwich or posting on EP Autos is an act of foolishness. While cruising steady state on a lightly traveled rural highway they are just a thing to do.
Men like and prefer manuals, I taught my son when he was 8, and he picked it right up. None of my daughters got it and they mostly won’t even try.
I hesitate to bring it up, but there is no technical reason one couldn’t make a simulated clutch and shifter arrangement replete with sensory feedback to operate an automatic. Especially a modern, electronically controlled automatic.
I’m sure it would be as accepted as the motor sounds on an EV.
I recall driving (4-speed manual) to class daily in the late ’80s with a coffee in one hand, a newspaper spread over the steering wheel, and an electric shaver in the other hand. My knees, feet, and right elbow (to hit the shifter) were obviously quite busy.
I did not realize how lazy one could be driving an automatic, until this newer vehicle I bought a few years ago was just that. I have had standard transmissions my entire life, weirdly enough. I find manuals are better for the ice and snow, as I feel (for me) that I have more control over the car. Oh yes, no eating and doing other crap with a manual. Except now I have to (and am still) re-train my brain to not try and “down shift” when slowing down. I have to remind myself that this vehicle does the shifting for me. Meh. If given a choice (which none of us do), I would stick with manuals. And, as Eric and others have said, they are increasingly becoming theft proof, as well. And yeah, my former car was fun as hell to drive, as well. Sadly, being allowed to actually DRIVE a vehicle by yourself without “help will be a thing of the past one of these days.
Correct. This idea is so far removed from todays consensus reality because of its absolute truth. I own both. There’s not much futzing around with other than DRIVING with my beloved manual.
After a nasty tib-fib fracture on a dirt bike, I drove my old 1970 F-100 pickup with my right leg in a rigid toe-to-hip cast. Worked the accelerator and brake pedals with my left foot, and the clutch with a crutch. With no power steering, downshifting to slow and turn was pretty tricky.
When my wife-to-be was 18, she bought a used 1977 Honda Accord 5-speed. The salesman taught her how to shift and drive it, first in the parking lot and then out on the road. She drove it home after that 20-minute lesson. (Her mother, a Louisiana woman, never learned — or tried — to drive.)
My wife, 64 yo, doesn’t and never learned to, drive. That does not stop her criticising my driving, 41 years out of 49 manual. I only drove automatic in NC. Always manual in Scotland.