Sales of Stick-Shift Cars Nearly Doubled From 2021 to 2023
Photo: BMW
As it turns out, the reports of the manual transmission’s death are greatly exaggerated. In just two years, the take-rate on stick-shift cars has nearly doubled. A new report from The Wall Street Journal using data from J.D. Power sheds light on just how many people are choosing to row their own gears in a new car.
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The data shows that so far in 2023, 1.7 percent of all new-car purchases have been vehicles with manual transmissions. On the face of it, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but everything is relative. Go back just one year to 2022, and the manual take-rate was just 1.2 percent. That’s a 41.7-percent increase in just one year. Sure, they’re small numbers, but that is a trend in the right direction, my friends.
The news is even better when you look back at 2021 – the worst year ever for manual transmissions. Only 0.9 percent of new vehicles sold in America were equipped with a stick-shift in ‘21. That means in just two years, manual transmission take-rate shot up by 88.9 percent. That’s nearly double, baby.
It’s not just new cars, either. WSJ’s report cites data from Autotrader showing that used-car buyers are searching for manual vehicles at a greater rate. We don’t have absolute before-and-after numbers, but the used-car-search website has apparently seen a 13-percent rise in page views for manual cars so far in 2023 compared to last year.
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The reason for this uptick? Young folks! We previously reported that millennials and zillennials are fueling this upward trend in manual-transmission sales. Young people love vinyl records and point-and-shoot cameras. Apparently that analog fascination extends to stick-shifts too.
It’s an especially interesting trend when you look at the fact that more and more folks are giving up their internal-combustion vehicles in favor of EVs. In an ever-more digitized and automated world, sometimes rowing your own gears is enough to give you a taste of the good old days.
