Sylvia Neubauer, BMW's Vice President of Customer, Brand, and Sales, told Automobilwoche that BMW's engineers are working on a way to keep the manual gearbox available and the company "promises a solution," Motor1 reports.
That follows February comments from BMW M division boss Frank van Meel to The Drive that, from an engineering standpoint, the manual "doesn't really make sense" and surviving into the next decade would be "quite difficult."
BMW says its current six-speed manual cannot handle rising torque demands, which led to dropping the manual from the 2026 BMW M2 CS since it could not exceed 500 hp; manual M models are capped around 473 hp and 406 lb-ft, prompting BMW to detune manual cars versus automatics.
Suppliers' reluctance and low global demand make a new manual costly, while Motor1 data show notable U.S. manual take rates: about 40% for the BMW M2 and 50% for the Z4 in 2025.
This summary is based on coverage by Jalopnik.
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