Carmakers almost had us convinced. They almost did it. They almost made us believe that no one wanted manuals anymore, that DCTs were better, and that rowing your own gears was going to go the way of POGs, The Hustle, and Freddie Prinze Jr.’s acting career. They were wrong! And fake manuals from Ferrari and the aftermarket are just proof that demand is there. The question is: Are these real manuals?
That’s the topic of this week’s Carbage Time podcast, and my carbage take is that carmakers were basically lying to us when they said that demand for manual sports cars was limited. While I don’t imagine every Nissan Sentra buyer wants a manual, people buying a Ferrari sure do.
As proof: The 12Cilindri Manuale. This is a Ferrari with a DCT that’s been retrofitted, by Ferrari, with a manual-like gearbox. Yes, the gorgeous gated shifter is back, and there’s a clutch pedal, but it’s basically shift-by-wire. Is this a bad thing? I don’t necessarily think it is. This is somewhat similar to the Koenigsegg CC850, which I think is cool. If that was it, I wouldn’t call it a trend, but then Rezvani came out with its own fake gearbox for DCTs (including Ferraris and the C8 Corvette), but this one with no clutch pedal. It’s super weird.
Given that Porsche told us the take-rates for 911 GT3s are above 50%, and that GT3 Touring sales are overwhelmingly manual, I think a lot of narratives we were sold by carmakers are just wrong. Are there buyers for manuals? Absolutely. Is the fact that DCTs are faster persuasive to most people? Not if they’re buying expensive sports cars and GTs. Porsche, by offering a mix of drivetrains, has gotten it right and has been rewarded with strong 911 sales this year.
We talk about all this on our latest episode.
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I Think I Have An Issue With The Rezvani Clutchless Thing
This photo is, I think, a Ferrari GTC4 Lusso. And that panel contains a gated shifter that connects to the car’s seven-speed DCT gearbox so that when you shift, it shifts. Think of it as a unique twist on a paddle shifter, I guess (though, is it only six forward gears and a reverse?).
Named Rezvani QuickShift, the system was developed with Italian company Studio Carrozzi, and at a glance it resembles what Ferrari recently revealed for the 12Cilindri Manuale. As in that car, the Rezvani unit works alongside the existing dual-clutch rather than replacing it.
The company hasn’t provided in-depth details on exactly how its shifter works and how it’s mated to the dual-clutch. What it does promise is that it requires no permanent modifications to the transmission and is fully reversible. Rezvani also says the conversion leaves the factory engine management system and existing safety electronics intact. As with the finest manual gearboxes bolted into high-end supercars over the years, it uses a metal gated shifter for that authentic feel
Yes, that Rezvani. For $25,000 this is a strange choice, especially if you buy a version of this for your C8 Corvette. Couldn’t you just … buy a C6 Corvette to go along with your C8 when you want to shift yourself? Again, this market wouldn’t exist if there weren’t customers clamoring for what they can’t have, which is the thing that some automakers said only the hardest-core enthusiasts wanted.
This concept of a fake manual isn’t all bad, and I think Jason may have discovered a way to do this that we’d all probably be ok with at the lower end of the spectrum, though you’ll have to listen to the episode to hear him explain it.
Let me know what you think. Is this the future? Are we ok with clutch-by-wire?
Top photo: Rezvani
Fun fact: in the early 1980s, Honda incorporated the clutch functionality into the shift lever on their ATC (All-Terrain Cycle) three-wheelers. When you moved the lever up or down, the clutch would disengage, the lever would move the shift fork(s) to change the actual gear, and then when you released pressure on the lever the clutch would re-engage. This process was generally transparent to the rider: just back off on the thumb-actuated throttle and shift.
However, if you were careful, you could move the lever just enough to slip the clutch and pick up some revs if you were stuck. (This was on a 110cc model; it was not a powerful machine.)
I was OK with a clutch by cable, does that count?
What I don’t get is that surely, SURELY it’s just cheaper to supply a manual gearbox than spend tens of thousands of hours on programming and testing to make a fake one.
I wanna see an electric car maker include a manual. Not because it needs one, but because it doesn’t.
I won’t be impressed until they maximize authenticity of these fake manuals and bring back the CAGS 1st-to-4th skip-shift.
I have been saying this for years, poor manual sales are a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, manual sales were down, but they hovered around 10% for years until manufacturers started dropping manuals from their lineups.
“Only 2% of all new US cars sales are manual” is a sentence that gets thrown around ALOT, but sales are that low because again, manufacturers refuse to offer manuals across their lineups, and when they do, their dealers refuse to stock them… or they only offer them in pointless trims that people don’t want with terrible engine options. They seemingly refuse to put in effort to offer a manual car that people actually want to buy while pointing at low sales number as the reason for not offering them in the first place.