BMW 230i

[BMWTurboDzl]

It is as fast. ZF8 is an absolute gem of transmission. No transmission comes close to ZF8.
They are still offering manuals in some models. There could be changes; a manual sale is like 700% up compared to last year. It is cool again to have a manual.

700%? So they sold 7 instead of 1 from the previous year? lol.

 

[edyvw]

700%? So they sold 7 instead of 1 from the previous year? lol.

Lol. I am talking US market.

 

[97prizm]

Lol. I am talking US market.

The BMW M3 in the USA market is selling around 25 plus percent manual transmissions according to BMW sales and marketing. It was supposed to go automatic only for the G20 but the USA complained and we get the low power M3 with the manual option. From what I've read vw Europe dropped the manual transmission in the golf R as take rate was low but its still sitting at 50/50 sales in the usa and a 52% manual sales rate in Canada. The issue is that the nhtsa requires crash testing on all variations of vehicles in the USA which is why we get so few performance versions. There was an interesting article a few years back when Subaru offered the STI-RA for the USA market. They spent an additional 2 million in crash testing and smog certification for a batch of 500 vehicles. It was different than the regular STI but not so much that it shouldn't have required that.