Remember when you didn’t have to tick a box for a manual transmission, it was just the de facto budget choice? Let’s just say that we aren’t in Kansas anymore, and haven’t been for a long time. For 2025, America’s cheapest stick-shift car isn’t just a proper sports car, it also carries a retail price that crests the $30,000 mark. I’m talking, of course, about the Mazda MX-5 Miata.
Yeah, I know, it’s hard to believe that there isn’t a single stick-shift car priced below $30,000 anymore, but look at the attrition. Volkswagen killed the three-pedal regular Jetta in 2025 (you can still get a GLI with a stick), you can’t get a Mini with a manual gearbox anymore, Nissan killed the Versa altogether, and you can’t get a manual in a regular Civic, Corolla, or Elantra anymore. The last normal non-high-performance compact car with a manual gearbox in America is the Mazda 3 Hatchback 2.5 S Premium, and that thing’s $32,685 including freight.
Does this make the Mazda MX-5 Miata Sport a bargain at $31,665 including freight? Well, yeah. Sure, it doesn’t have a rear seat or a huge trunk, so it’s not the most practical car in the world, but it is a ton of fun. Modest curb weight, engine up front, drive to the back, and a smiling piece of meat pulling a mechanical lever in the middle. Sounds like a good time, yeah?
Okay, sure, this base trim doesn’t come equipped with a limited-slip rear differential, or Bilstein dampers, or the option of more than just black or red paint, but the latest facelift means it’s not lacking in creature comforts. You get air conditioning, a larger infotainment screen (still with wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto), a leather-wrapped steering wheel and shift knob, and trick new LED headlights. That’s no hardship.
Still, something feels a touch sickening about the general state of the row-your-own landscape. Flash back 20 years, and there were a number of sport compact cars you could’ve bought for less than the cost of the cheapest new Miata. The Honda Civic Si, the Saturn Ion Red Line, the Volkswagen Golf GTI. Now that whole segment is simply more expensive than the Miata. Blend that with a general lack of properly cheap brand-new stick-shift cars, and it feels like the end of the genre for most of us is nigh.
Sure, there will still be three-pedal hypercars with seven-figure price tags and marketing copy practically abusing terms like ‘analog’ and ‘engagement.’ They make fine eye candy on golf course greens and glitzy turntables, but to a nation with a median household income of $83,730 and six figures of average household debt, they’re about as unrelatable as a Hollywood nepobaby. When you have kids to put through college or payments to make to the Snap-On truck or a little bit of inopportune medical debt, there’s no dreaming about being a billionaire in a car cave full of carbounobtanium.
Instead, the stick shift used to be the way to signal both thrift and priority. Decades ago, rowing your own gears saved you money at the dealership, money at the gas pumps, and it shaved time off your zero-to-60 mph run. Sure, it had a learning curve, but it was an instrument of resolve and self-reliance. Stick with it, and you’d get back what you put in. Now though, that’s all changed.
Ever since the advent of more advanced automatic transmissions than ye olde four-speed slushboxes, two-pedal technology has been tilting the playing field. Modern automatics are almost always more efficient than their stick-shift equivalents. At the same time, clever automatic transmission programming can game fuel economy and noise tests to offer shorter gear ratios than a manual transmission without incurring a fuel economy penalty, and modern turbocharged engines generally benefit with automatics behind them. Add in worsening traffic just about everywhere, and the common manual transmission is becoming an endangered species.
Still, if only one stick-shift new vehicle can be the cheapest, it’s fitting for it to be the most successful sports car of all time. A proper rear-wheel-drive roadster with huge motorsports support, a million miles of headroom, and a certain joie de vivre. While a $30,000 compact crossover is a well-balanced meal of vegetables and starches, the MX-5 Miata is ice cream. Its value for the soul far eclipses its on-paper nutritional value. Enjoy it while you still can.
Top graphic image: Mazda
WIRED Apple Car Play in 2026. I swear every time I think about a Miata there is some random thing that turns me off the deal.
Thank goodness for ice cream.
” Decades ago, rowing your own gears saved you money at the dealership, money at the gas pumps, and it shaved time off your zero-to-60 mph run. Sure, it had a learning curve, but it was an instrument of resolve and self-reliance. Stick with it”
I see what you did there.
How much are they really saving by keeping the lsd out of the base model? They should be tarred and feathered for that. Aside from the fact I can’t fit in one… no lsd would be a no go.
I don’t know freight’s contribution, but I believe the GR86 still starts just under this with a standard LSD and it has a surprising amount of utility with a bigger trunk, back seat that folds flat, and actual space that can fit a human without having to sit bolt upright like in some kind of formal Victorian waiting area chair meant to keep guests a bit uncomfortable to keep them off balance.
It needs a tuned 1.8L V6. It could keep its balance, possibly fit without heightening the hood, and make 220+ horsepower.
THEN change the body to shun the stupid styling elements and turn it into a streamliner with les than half the CdA value when the top is up.
You’d have something that was not just a halo car for fuel economy to compete with the Toyota Prius, but also something that performance-wise could punch well above its weight.
You all are eventually going to wear me down.
A family friend has an NA that hit a deer, I’m tempted to take it on as a fixer-upper.