BMW's American manual (updated)

Newswheel staff :: 12 May 2005 :: Filed under Saloon, BMW, BMW 5 Series, BMW M5, Europe & UK, US,

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US implicated in "driving enthusiast" shocker

Americans. A risible bunch of slushbox-fancying, Tiptronic-toting philistines who wouldn’t recognise a manual gearbox if it dropped a WMD on them. Surely? Wrong. BMW North America has successfully lobbied the Munich mothership to change tack on its any-gearbox-as-long-as-it’s-the-seven-speed-semi-auto policy for the mighty V10 M5 supersaloon. From 2007, buyers in the US of A will be treated with the option of plumping for a conventional, three-pedal six-speed manual transmission. And the bad news for smug Europeans is that they won’t be getting it. 

Or at least that’s what US car rag Car and Driver is claiming. Apparently, decadent Europeans are so fixated with the ridiculous pantomime that is Formula 1 racing, they consider robotised, paddle-shift gearboxes to be the very epitome of automotive sporting endeavour. Given that Ferrari’s flagship road car, the rather unsubtle Enzo, comes exclusively configured with a paddle-shift, that sort of reasoning is understandable. Of course, Porsche’s manual-only Carrera GT confuses the issue somewhat, even if cost and development issues probably dictated the use of a conventional gearbox. In fact, the Carrera GT’s box is one of the reasons we’d take it over the garish Enzo any day. Whatever, we suspect once it becomes available in the US, BMW will struggle to refuse calls for a manual M5 in the motherland. 

Update:
UK title Evo is also running this story and fleshes out a few details. In short, BMW of North America reckons it’s losing a significant number of sales (of both the M5 and the recently intro’d M6 coupe) from hardcore M-Power fans who feel the SMG box doesn’t deliver the full driver’s car Monty. EVO speculates the manual box may mirror the first six ratios of the SMG transmission and therefore result in the loss a few clicks of top-end velocity. That is all.

Linkage:

Car and Driver
Evo