Skip to footer

Ultimate driving machine: BMW M5 won’t offer manual transmission?

Performance cars like the BMW luxury-performance sedan M5's make numerous concessions in the interests of comfort and civility, that cost speed and handling. But the next M5 may make a big concession, and not offer a manual transmission option.

|
Matthias Schrader/AP/File
In this July 29, 2009 file picture, the logo car producer BMW AG is photographed on the back of a car in front of the company's headquarter in Munich, southern Germany. Next generation M5's may make a big concession, and not offer a manual transmission option.
  • By Viknesh Vijayenthiran Guest blogger

Performance cars are all about performance, except when they're not. In the case of luxury-performance sedans like BMW's M5, there are numerous concessions made to comfort and civility that cost ultimate speed and handling.

But the next M5 may make a big concession: no manual transmission, not even as an option.

That’s according to the development boss of BMW M, Albert Biermann.

Speaking with Inside Line, Biermann explained that the additional cost of engineering a car to offer a manual is never covered due to their low take-up rate. Because of this, the next-generation BMW M5 and M6 models won’t likely offer a manual and will instead come with dual-clutch transmissions exclusively.

This is already the case in many countries with the current generation of the cars, but in the US BMW decided to offer them with a manual because there was still sufficient demand.

"Last year, maybe 15-20 percent of our M5s in the U.S. were manuals and maybe this year it will be 15 percent. It's declining," Biermann said. "The trouble is that nobody wants it in Europe or anywhere else, so this will be the last time we do it, even for the hard-core U.S. buyers."

While the manual transmission may be dead in the M5 and M6, Biermann was happy to confirm that the M3 will continue to offer a manual transmission.

And while BMW M may be phasing out the manual transmission, Porsche has shown with its latest 911 that the manual transmission does have a bright future.

BMW, too, was recently discovered to be investigating the use of more advanced manual transmissions, including designs with seven or more gears.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Ultimate driving machine: BMW M5 won’t offer manual transmission?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2012/0621/Ultimate-driving-machine-BMW-M5-won-t-offer-manual-transmission
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe