Aston Martin stated a few years ago through the previous CEO that it wanted to become the ‘last sports car manufacturer with a manual gearbox’, but that will not happen. The new CEO says it is coming to an end.
The manual gearbox is on the decline in the entire car industry, although there are still plenty of people who prefer to hold a gear lever in a sports car. For them, the choice is getting smaller when they are looking for a new car. Former Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer stated in 2016 that ‘his’ brand would remain a safe haven for those people, because if it were up to him, Aston Martin would be the very last sports car manufacturer to leave the manual transmission. His successor, Tobias Moers, who came over from Mercedes-AMG, has a different idea.
The Aston Martin V8 Vantage AMR is currently the only Aston Martin with a manual gearbox and will also be the last. This is evident from Moers’ unadulterated words, quoted by Motoring.com. “… we don’t need it anymore. Every year we also have to bring it back into line with the new emissions regulations, because it is a special powertrain. That makes no sense anymore.” The manual gearbox in the Vantage AMR was not developed by Aston Martin itself, but by Graziano. The DB9 and One-77 also had a gearbox from the Italian company.
Moers, a man who seems to look at the figures a bit more than his predecessor, thinks that apart from being a too ‘maintenance-intensive project’, it no longer adds value to the clientele, because according to him the majority would choose a machine anyway. The fact that Aston Martin is going to stop with it, gives Porsche good papers to get something even more exclusive with the 911 GT3.