from Hacker News

The Last 5-Speed Manual in the US Is Gone

by cf100clunk on 6/3/25, 9:51 PM with 36 comments

• by euroderf on 6/15/25, 6:28 AM

  I always understood the appeal of a stick shift as:

  I want to drive the car, not the other way around.

• by Robdel12 on 6/4/25, 12:15 AM

  Makes me happy to know the Ford CEO is a diehard racer and has said on stage they’ll be the last selling manual v8s.

  Take it from my cold dead hands.

• by js2 on 6/4/25, 2:20 AM

  The other day I was at an oil change place and the guy in front of me was waiting in front of the bay. After his oil was changed, an employee brought him his keys and he went and got into the car in the bay and drove it around, then went into the office and paid.

  After he pulled around I guessed it was because his car was a manual and none of the kids changing oil had the ability to drive it. Confirmed it with him when he came out to leave.

  I was sad. :-(

  On a positive note, I recently read about a carjacker being foiled by a manual transmission, so there's that.

• by m463 on 6/3/25, 11:52 PM

  > there won’t be any new five-speed manual vehicles for sale in the United States.

  > Only six-speed and a few seven-speed manuals will remain.

• by Koshkin on 6/3/25, 11:11 PM

  > That isn’t much of a surprise, given that six-speeds have been the norm for years.

  So, not everything is lost?

• by floxy on 6/3/25, 10:38 PM

  Looks like ~1% of U.S. car sales have manual transmissions.

  https://www.theautopian.com/manual-transmissions-now-make-up...

• by ternaryoperator on 6/3/25, 10:53 PM

  Europe is behind the US in terms of the ratio, but even they are headed in this direction. 10 years ago in France, you couldn't rent anything but a manual transmission, now renting an automatic is not unusual.

• by frognumber on 6/4/25, 3:02 AM

  When I bought my car, TCO for manual was higher than for automatic. Base purchase price was about $500 lower, but required a pretty frequent maintenance schedule. Automatic was nearly maintenance-free (although the little maintenance required had higher unit costs).

  I ran the numbers. Automatic won for cost.

  For a cheap car, manual makes little sense for a rational consumer.

  Ergo, they're only left on fancy sports cars.

• by moderation on 6/4/25, 1:37 AM

  I have a 5-speed manual Polaris Slingshot. A lot of fun.

• by zinekeller on 6/4/25, 7:35 PM

  > Looks like Nissan is trying to create as much savings as possible to handle the 25% tariff on cars imported from Mexico.

  No, no, no. The US tariffs may have a teeny tiny effect, but Nissan is actually cutting across-the-board due to their extremely bad spreadsheets (and failed Honda merger/acquisition).