![]() Pricing starts around $70,000 for the standard M3 sedan. The BMW 3-Series it shares its platform with no longer offers a manual, but the M3 still comes standard with one. It uses a 3.0-liter twin-turbocharged engine, rear-wheel-drive, and a traditional six-speed manual transmission. Yet, the M3 is still a genuinely fun-to-drive vehicle. The latest M3 is heavier than the old cars, and it's lost its edge in the handling department. Six generations of production have brought some changes. The BMW M3 has long been the benchmark for sports sedans. You can find the rest at the bottom of the article in our "Honorable Mentions" section. Below, we will highlight 15 of these unique cars. The following vehicles range in price from under $20,000 to well over $100,000. Instead, we kept it to cars in the traditional sense: Sedans, coupes, convertibles, and hatchbacks. We didn't include SUVs or trucks for this list. Around 29 new vehicle models made the cut. Though using a manual transmission isn't as convenient, relaxing, or practical as an automatic, many drivers still yearn for the tactile feedback missing from many of the latest and greatest new vehicles.įor this list, we researched every new car currently available with a manual transmission. And the advent of hybrid cars and the quest for high fuel economy has had automakers creating new types of automatic transmissions that are more efficient than manuals. More people are living in densely populated suburbs, which means more traffic. ![]() While there was a time when "stick-shifts" were commonplace on the car market, today's world calls for different priorities. The act of manually shifting gears adds another layer to the driving experience, making it more challenging and satisfying. But it’s the last that anyone cares about.Few things connect the driver to the road quite like a manual transmission. Technically, the F430 wasn’t the last Ferrari available with a manual gearbox that was the California. It’s one of the reasons an air-cooled Porsche 993 is worth so much more than the water-cooled 996 that replaced it. However, transcending all that is the fact that a manual Ferrari 360 or F430, much like a naturally aspirated 458, represents something that’s forever gone. But it doesn’t involve you in the act of driving in the same way as a manual does, and it’s hard not to compare it unfavorably with a modern DCT, which is faster-shifting and far more refined. Some owners swear by the F1 ‘box, whose short clutch life was much improved for the F430, and you certainly won’t feel short-changed for drama when it bangs home those redline upchanges. Like the 458, they’re even more likely to be used sparingly than they were when they were new, and so owners want to bring them out and treat themselves with an experience very different to the one they get from their daily cars.Īnd it’s worth pointing out that the manual transmission driving experience has aged a whole lot more gracefully than the F1’s has. Then there’s also the fact that these cars are now 15 or 20 years old in some cases. Stick-shift cars accounted for less than 10 per cent of F430 sales, independent Ferrari sources claim. The F1 outsold the manual car by around 2:1 globally in the 360 era, and was even more dominant during the F430 years. ![]() Most people went for the paddleshift setup when ordering their cars. So why the big markup when the manual cars cost less when new, and Ferrari itself claimed the F1 transmission was both technically superior, and made the car faster around a track?įirst, the manual cars are rare. Dealers are asking £90,000 ($125,000) for 2005 F430 coupes with the F1 transmission and 20k miles, but perhaps £120,000 ($167,000) for a manual equivalent. It’s interesting to note that manual cars in the UK, while still worth more than F1 cars, don’t carry anything like the same premium. So far we’ve been talking about the situation in the U.S. Hagerty quotes $75,000 as a realistic value for a 2000 coupe, and advises to add 33 per cent for the manual transmission, which was more commonly found in 360s than it was in F430s. Looking at the older 395 hp 360 Modena, which used essentially the same chassis, but came equipped with a totally different V8 engine and did without the F430’s active differential, the difference in values is still pronounced, but isn’t quite so stark.
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