The Toyota Supra’s manual transmission option has been a huge success

Again in November 2021, after spending A week driving a bright yellow Toyota SupraI was surprised at how much I enjoyed driving the car. But the entire time I’ve owned the car, I’ve taken the incredibly controversial position that it would be better to pedal third. So I asked Toyota to give the Supra a clue. Obviously, Toyota was convinced by my superior logic (and my logic alone) because less than six months later, Toyota announced that it would do just that. They say automotive journalists make bad product planners, but who’s the bad product planner now, the one who decided it only had to be auto?

Yes, as it turns out, the Toyota Supra’s manual transmission option has been a huge success. On many cars, even high-performance cars, the cornering rate is embarrassingly low. Like so low that, as manual transmission enthusiasts, we should be ashamed of ourselves. When 95 percent of the units sold for a given model are automatic units, is it really any surprise that companies have such a hard time convincing bean counters to let them develop a new manual transmission that so few people will buy? However, Supra buyers are built differently.

Route and track reports That 47 percent of all Supras sold since Toyota began offering them as an option have been manuals. That’s almost half! Surely this does not exceed 1,216 cars, but still, this is a big win! And we mentioned that Superb manual Supra? The demand is clearly there and likely has always been. How Toyota missed that in the Focus groups, we have no idea. Toyota may not have done any focus groups on transmission preferences among potential Supra buyers. Perhaps this is not a common thing in the industry. I don’t know. I am not a product planner. But I’m starting to think maybe I should be.