What a load of nonsense. The manual gearbox for sports cars died around 2010-ish. Before you protest that you can still buy manual sports cars, hear me out. Th

What a load of nonsense. The manual gearbox for sports cars died around 2010-ish. Before you protest that you can still buy manual sports cars, hear me out. The manual gearbox you can buy in any sports car today has obscenely long ratios. Partly this is common sense - almost every sports car for sale today is turbocharged, you don’t need a close ratio box. The other reason if emissions, long gone are the days of the top gear being long, with standardised emission test cycles that have prolonged driving periods at town speeds, now all gears are optimised for lower revs. It’s not uncommon to find you only need 2nd gear for anything from 30 to 80, i.e. the speeds you’ll spend most of your time on a nice set of twisties. Why 2010? That’s when the borg warner DSGs broke into the mainstream. No human can match their efficiency nor their shift speed. The only remaining reason in sportscars is for driver engagement. Since then the traditional slushbox auto has caught up, i have a ZF in one of my cars and it’s every bit as fast and just as smooth changing as the DSG in my last VAG.