The manual transmission is going the way of music on vinyl: soon it will be something beloved by the aficionado, the collector, the niche nostalgia fan, but shunned by mainstream manufacturers and consumers. That is already the case in the United States. While classic Hollywood car chases call for endless dramatic stick-shifting, real-life American motoring has long kept both hands on the wheel. Almost three quarters of new cars registered in the UK in 2023 were automatics. As recently as 2019, the split was 50-50. Electric cars are all automatics. Three pedals are set to become two, the clutch a gooseberry.
• Learner drivers’ shift to automatics spells death of manual gearbox
Given this, it is rational that more drivers opt to learn in automatics. Without the dreaded clutch control which bamboozled generations of beginners, automatics are easier to master. A decade ago 100,000 new drivers passed in an automatic. Last year almost 325,000 did so. Two in five instructors now choose to train in automatics. Purists argue that driving pleasure is more intense, more hands-on, literally, in a manual on an open road (if any still exist) in the countryside. Yet in the stop-go traffic snarl of a city, constant shifting between first, second and (rarely) third is tiresome, foot-aching and fuel-inefficient.
The big casualty of the change rushing up in the rear-view may well be intergenerational understanding. The boss delivering a pep talk to her sales team will urge them to “get their brains in gear”, “find the extra gear” or “go up through the gears” only to be met with puzzled shrugs. Youngsters enjoying repeat episodes of an old motoring show will ask each other, “Dude, why Top Gear?” And the first verse of the Friends theme won’t make sense to future fans, with no clue what it feels like to be “always stuck in second gear”. The terror of the first hill start is lost to them. They should be grateful.
