Manually Getting There.

So I composed a list for North American car manufacturers offering a manual transmission in their line up. I found a lot of interesting things when searching through different car web pages, especially gaudy flair.

The Alfa Romeo webpage was by far the most confusing of them all. I tried to get a simple spec sheet that took me more than 6 minutes to find, I should have been paid for fanyarin’ that kazi. Porsche also has too many options for their cars that they fail in giving a clean webpage to properly choose and differentiate between the options. Honestly, if you are getting a brand new Porsche, find a dealership and let them help you with those choices. The easiest page was Scion, nothing flashy and quite simple to understand and build my car.

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Few surprises were with Audi only having manuals for its A4, A5, and R8 lines, this includes S models. They had the easiest and cleanest web configuration when building a car out of the other luxury brand vehicles. Volkswagen also shares parts with the A3 through the A6 models, so I was surprised that the A3 didn’t have a manual transmission standard/option, yet all Volkswagen’s do. With the release of the new Lamborghini Huracan I won’t be surprised if the new R8 V10 loses the manual option too.

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The three Japanese luxury brands have essentially phased out all manual transmissions in their line up. I know Acura is now officially overseen by U.S. management as of the beginning of this year, so I’m not sure if the ILX will even remain a manual. Infiniti hasn’t released its official Q60 coupe since it shares engines with the Fairlady Z and Lexus decided the IS models don’t need manuals anymore.

For the American brands, Ford had options on almost all their sedans and coupes besides the Taurus. Chevrolet and Dodge also had a great line-up for a manual transmission package on their cars. As for  luxury U.S. cars, Buick and Cadillac had at least one or two options performance cars with manual options.

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Lotus, Porsche, and Subaru were my all time favorites. They still offer manuals as standard and their line-up’s were amazing. The BMW range disappoints me, it looks like they are slowly trying to let go of the manual. However I’m glad the M6 and M5 still have that option available.

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Vanquish all competition.

Aston’s by far are the most interesting automobiles I have seen thus far. They aren’t out there to be the fastest, flashiest, or loudest; but to stand alone in individuality and finesse. Bugatti came out to beat the F1 and other cars in a top speed record, however in my opinion it failed in having significant presence and merely became a really expensive Louis Vuitton bag that sits in a wardrobe; only coming out for people to see how expensive of a bag…car it is. It still is an inovative car.

Anyways, we are here to talk about the Vanquish, one of my favorite Astons to date. It’s comeback definitely made car companies think how such a pretty looking car can still look and sit so aggressively. Plus the exhaust note on those things are so magical.

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LeMans 2014, feeds for an incredible fight for 2015.

Although I’m not too ecstatic of Audi winning this years Le Mans in the LMP1  category, I can’t wait to see what is going to happen next year. Toyota and Porsche gave a hard fight, but their issues were more “permanent” then the Audi turbochargers failing. Audi will definitely need to step up their game to keep Porsche and Toyota from grabbing wins in the LMP1 class.

Also congrats to Ferrari and Aston Martin in the GT classes. Awesome driving.

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