Road CaManual gearboxes are making a comeback as drivers crave more excitements

A spot of festive cheer with which to bring in your New Year, the result of a chat with Andy Morley, managing director of Hewland Engineering. Hewland will scarcely need introducing to you, not least because its gearboxes were fitted to the vast majority of Formula 1 cars throughout the DFV era, not to mention all those other transmissions it made, and continues to make, for myriad formulae.

But actually our conversation was about road cars and, specifically, the resurgence of interest in road cars with three pedals in their footwells. Could the manual transmission be making a comeback? Morley has no doubt.

He has seen a significant increase in demand from clients to develop manual gearboxes on their behalf and he puts it down to two distinct yet clearly related reasons: first, people are fast realising how joyless is the performance of mega-horsepower electric cars which has, in turn, been responsible for the rise and rise of the restomod market, where the cars we loved when young are made fitter, faster and better without destroying their original charm. Which has led to customers being reminded how much more fun cars can be when control is devolved back to the driver.

Now, there are manual transmissions in sporting cars that are still out there, and in cars all the way from the Mazda MX-5 to Gordon Murray’s GMA T.50. But Morley recognises the potential for strong growth in many other areas of the market and can see traditional supercar manufacturers returning to the format after years or sometimes decades away. And while he’s too discreet to name names, he’s referring to the likes of Ferrari and Lamborghini.

Of course he’s right. Ferrari might be able to sell a 1000bhp, four-seat EV on brand value alone but if there’s any evidence, and I do mean any at all, that shows any meaningful demand for electric high-end sports and supercars, I’ve not seen it. On the contrary we appear to have reached some kind of tipping point where people are realising that more weight and power results only in less true driving pleasure. Increasingly, the discerning crave authenticity in what they drive, and if the manufacturers they expect to provide it haven’t got what they crave, they’re going to go elsewhere.

No, manual gearboxes are never going to become the norm again and they make no sense in the EVs we use for daily transport, but for recreational motoring in cars at all price points and at least while legislation allows, it looks like they could be coming back. And about time too.

“TVR is proving somewhat Rasputin-like in its refusal to die”

I learn that the last Ford Focus has rolled off the line, consigning the model to history. To be honest I thought it had happened a while back, given the announcement of its imminent demise was made back in 2022. So now its two best-selling cars in Europe have gone – because you’ll remember it killed the Fiesta too – you may wonder how things have been going since.

Not brilliantly it has to be said. The Fiesta went so the Cologne factory in which it was built could be transformed at the expense of £720m into a state-of-the-art facility, capable of producing 250,000 EVs per year, currently the Explorer and Capri models. But in the first half of this year Ford made just 19,000 Explorers and an unspecified but far lower number of Capris, substantially below expectations. A thousand jobs have been cut in the face of demand for EVs being a fraction of what was anticipated. In just 10 years Ford has gone from being Europe’s second best-selling car manufacturer to its 12th, losing half its market share on the way.

I actually thought the Explorer a capable enough example of the EV art, the Capri less attractive, more expensive and burdened with a name whose promise it cannot conceivably look up to. But they are both essentially rebodied Volkwagen EVs and I find it impossible to see either making even a small portion of the positive impact on Ford as that made by the Fiesta and Focus, whether you look at it in terms of volume, profit or reputational enhancement. In short it has killed the two greatest cars Ford of Europe has made in my near 40 years in this business and introduced two others of no great distinction which will be remembered as fair-to-middling products at best if, indeed, they are remembered at all.

TVR is proving somewhat Rasputin-like in its refusal to die. I can’t count the number of times the company has lifted its head off the floor since it showed the one and only example of the ‘new’ Griffith rather more than eight years ago, but to no one’s greater surprise than mine, it’s just done it again.

This time it has been absorbed into Charge Holdings, a company that also owns Charge Cars which restomods old classics into modern EVs. The idea is finally to get the Griffith into production before a new generation of cars are produced on an electrified platform. The single press release on the subject doesn’t say when or where because it has no factory, nor even how because I understand the rights to the iStream production process that was to have created it got sold when Forseven bought Gordon Murray Technologies. Do I think this is at last the long-awaited rebirth of a much-loved brand? I do not, remotely. But I’d love to be proven wrong.

Timbre Merchant

‘Wooden’ five-cylinder Audi RS3 Sportback|
Today the petrol five-cylinder is to be found on just one variant of one model: the Audi RS3. It’s a good car, but not a great one. It’s has the looks and the sound but its handling is wooden and at £64,920, it’s expensive. Truth is, a VW Golf R for £20,000 less is a better bet.

Verdict: Too stolid for its own good.

How about a crewe cut?

Bentley Supersports limited to just 500
With the Supersports, Bentley has managed to drop the weight of a Continental GT Speed by damn near half a tonne. At £343,900, it’s hardly mainstream but the company needs something to balance the introduction of its first EV in 2027, something that says ‘we still get it’.

Mitsubishi back in summer   

Japanese maker left the UK in 2021
Car companies that leave the UK rarely, if ever, return but Mitsubishi, which departed in 2021, will be once more selling new  cars here from summer ’26. No one is saying which new cars these will be but likely candidates include the latest version of the Outlander and the Eclipse Cross –  a Renault Scenic by another name.