Audi Repair Shop Doylestown
Call 267 279 9477 to schedule a appointment
The 2019
3 Series will not have a manual transmission in the United States. Cue Don McLean, cause this might be the day the music died.
While its manual take rate has plummeted over the years as the 3 Series started catering to a wider luxury audience (increasingly crap traffic everywhere certainly doesn’t help), it was still one of the few luxury sport sedans that would allow you to row your own. Answering in the affirmative to “did you get the manual?” was still good enough to elicit a satisfied head nod from car enthusiasts — and an apathetic “oh” if you didn’t. Personally, I’m still disappointed every time I see an automatic shifter inside a 3 Series of any vintage.
And yet,
it was confirmed to us this morning
that “[g]lobally, the 2019 330i and M340i are only available with the eight-speed automatic transmission with sport auto being optional. In the U.S. we get the Sport automatic standard for both models with included launch control.”
Smaller engines can be had with a manual in Europe, but we don’t get those. BMW has said there are no plans to make one available for the bigger engines we do get, but that could also mean “we have no plans that we would share at this time.” Still seems doubtful, though.
BMW has also made it clear, as most German engineers are apt to do, that the automatic offers superior acceleration and performance than the manual can. To them, it’s like suggesting to your local transit authority that the new light rail line be powered by steam. They cannot fathom why you’d use an inferior technology.
Many of us know the answer to that, but apparently not many enough are
with manual transmissions. Not that we’d really be able to if we wanted to at this point. With the 3 Series joining the
as automatic-only in 2019, that leaves the
/
as the only other car in this segment that allows you to change gears for yourself.
You can see the full 2018 manual cars list here
.
Oh well, there’s always the
classifieds.
Related Video:
from Autoblog https://ift.tt/2IxPjRh