This week, it was announced that BMW was getting rid of its manual and dual-clutch transmissions in favour of torque-converter automatics, which are better. Sources say that the current BMW M2 will be the last BMW M car to have three wheels. People like me would often cry and wring their hands when another vehicle with a manual drive died. But in this case, I couldn’t help but smile and say, “Good riddance.” The problem with BMW’s manual gearboxes is that they need to be more outstanding. They’ve always been flawed. Whether it was my high school friend’s E34 540i, the E39 M5 he finally got, or the one in the new M2, I’ve never driven a manual BMW and thought, “Wow, yeah, what a great gearbox.” The clutch is always too far to the right (too close to the brake pedal), the shift action is usually soft, and it feels much more challenging to master in stop-and-go traffic than with other manual gears. Please forgive the car analogy, but that nonsense about where to put the clutch drives me crazy. Whenever I drove an M2, I often accidentally brake with my left foot on the approach or let out the dead pedal because my shoe would get caught in the side trim. The third pedal is never in the right place, and there needs to be more room for mistakes. Some might say that a lousy manual is better than none, but I disagree. In any case, BMW is best at automatics, not those old SMGs, so it would be wise for the company to focus on them. The eight-speed transmission made by ZF is a real gem used in many of its goods today. And in its most aggressive M4 CSL form, I called it “a triumph” with “manual shifts that feel noticeably faster and mid-corner downshifts that are smoothed out so as not to upset the balance—this is video game-level response right here.”
