Hyundai created quite a ripple recently when the company in Europe said that manual transmissions are dying and no one is interested in them. Speaking to Car Magazine, Tyone Johnson, Managing Director of the Europe Technical Center in Germany, sparked a debate by saying, “Nobody wants manual gearboxes anymore.” Does this mean the end of the road is sooner rather than later for the clutch and the art of stick driving? Will popular Creta go the automatic way only and retire its manual transmissions in India? Not yet.
An exaggeration or hard reality?
This statement by Johnson isn’t an exaggeration in the Western countries, as the car buyers prefer automatics over manuals. The same cannot be said in India, as the entry-level cars continue to sell stick gearboxes. In the midsize SUV segment, the customers prefer to buy automatics, but this is mostly limited to the top variants. With choc-a-bloc traffic everywhere in India, the demand for automatics is steadily growing, but it’s far from making the manual gear stick extinct.
Johnson further explains that most car buyers under the age of 40 don’t even want hand brakes and analogue instrument clusters.
Netizens defend the gearstick
The social media witnessed an uproar over Johnson’s statement. Many rekindled their memories when they learnt to drive for the first time; some pointed out the additional expenditure over automatic maintenance, and others were just plain and simple furious. On X, @FelipePorazzi posted, Those who are in favour of manual don’t have the $ (money) to buy an automatic or … spend a fortune to fix an automatic transmission.”
Nelinha (@PamelaMelo) raised an interesting point: “Whoever buys a brand-new manual car nowadays will have a hard time reselling it in a few years.”
Many raised their objection on popular forums like TeamBhp. Forum handle, motorguy BHPian, said, “My issue is that in India, I have yet to see a mechanic who can service an automatic properly – most of them have no clue of the workings of even an AMT or a torque converter automatic, not to mention DCTs … Routine jobs like replacement of ATF fluid are extremely hard to do, especially since most mechanics do not know how to properly do it, and also, one can never even remove all the ATF fluid because of the AT transmission design. Transmission filters are rarely replaced because most mechanics do not even know that a transmission filter has to be replaced when changing ATF fluid. Many dealers wrongly give the impression to customers that AT transmissions are “sealed for life” and no ATF fluid ever has to be changed.”
Another forum member in Team-Bhp, anlyticaldriver Newbie, said, “It is clearly a marketing stunt! I admire Hyundai for innovation in the EV space, but I would rather disagree with the gentleman – the analogue dials and manual transmission are here to stay just like the physical control knobs for AC/Vol control!”
