Ferrari has no plans to reintroduce manual gearboxes

The good old-fashioned manual transmission has enjoyed something of a renaissance of late, but Ferrari has no plans to jump on the bandwagon. 

Pagani and Koenigsegg brought back sticks, the latter in a gloriously unconventional but nonetheless valid way, in the wake of the success of the GMA T.50, probably the greatest driver’s car ever to exist and a worthy successor to the McLaren F1. In fact, if you want your multi-million-pound hypercar to sell out (or sell at all these days) it better not be electric and it better have a stick in the middle and a clutch pedal, if not a naturally-aspirated high-revving combustion engine.

Meanwhile the best Porsches are still manuals, the stick-equipped Mazda MX-5 tied the McLaren Artura Spider on our last evo Car of the Year test and even major manufacturers like Aston Martin are considering bringing a manual back as a mainstream offering. Conspicuous in its silence on the issue over these last few years, has been Ferrari. Until now… and it’s shot down any hopes that Maranello will revive the famous gated shifter.

When asked about the prospect of a manual transmission making its way back into its modern cars at the reveal of the new Amalfi, Ferrari’s chief marketing and commercial officer Enrico Galliera, was almost entirely dismissive:

‘You missed it! The manual gearbox, we already have it, in many of our classic cars. You can go and drive our fantastic manual gearboxes on our fantastic events for our classic cars. Whoever wants to have this kind of classic experience, they can buy and restore our fantastic classics and come to our events. We have it, we push our clients to discover the beauty of driving a classic car. We offer Corsa Pilotti on classic cars because many people don’t know how to use the manual cars. It’s an important experience that we can offer on our classic cars for the time being.’

We say almost because Galliera did say ‘for the time being’, which is almost ‘never say never’. Ferrari isn’t beyond listening to the demands of its customers. The return to physical controls and a physical starter button is testament to that. Given the right amount of demand, manuals are an option that in all likelihood, would at least be explored.

But there is precedent for their apprehension. Just look back to the California, the Amalfi’s ancestor. A manual was developed offered for that car but just three were built, compared to the thousands of Californias that arrived outfitted with Ferrari’s first dual-clutch, paddle-actuated transmission. The demand simply wasn’t there.

As outlined above, though, 2025’s is a very different car market to 2009’s – one course-correcting towards driving sensation over outright performance, at least at the higher end. It’s our hope that this above anything else trickles down and that eventually, Ferrari, among others, sees the light.