Where is the starting point?
In the United States, every car has an automatic transmission. A well-known prejudice, but the percentage of cars with a manual transmission is actually much lower on the other side of the big lake than in Europe. The American branch of Mini establishes the Mini Manual Driving School to get the American consumer to the manual transmission and therefore also to the products of Mini.
In 2020, CNBC research found that only about 13 percent of cars sold in the United States that year have a manual transmission. Until recently, every Mini model in the United States had an automatic transmission, but from November the three-door hatchback Cooper, Cooper S and John Cooper Works are also available with an optional manual gearbox. In order to introduce the American Mini customer to the manual gearbox and of course to entice them to tick the manual gearbox option, Mini Americans will learn to shift gears themselves.
Mini is setting up the Mini Manual Driving School in the United States. At the BMW Performance Center in Thermal, California, in the American state of California, instructors will be giving classroom lessons and practical lessons on ‘self-shifting’. Mini says it will explain how to find the point of application, how to shift smoothly and how to get out of the starting blocks with a manual gearbox. There is even a practical exam in a closed area. So you see, the manual transmission is not dead yet, not even in the United States.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl