Honda has announced it will no longer offer a manual transmission in the Accord sedan, which was until now one of the very few sedans still available with other than an automatic.
The Civic coupe and Fit have also been given the heave-ho due to declining interest – read, profitability – in small cars.
The Civic coupe accounts for just 6 percent of all U.S. Civic sales compared with 16 percent four years ago, Honda said. Only 2 percent of Accords are sold with a stick.
Honda actually ended production of the manual Accord in December but still has enough inventory for the rest of the model year. The Civic retains its manual transmissions in sedan, hatch, Si sport trim and the track-ready Type R performance variant.
“I get it that there are people who will be disappointed, but I have complete confidence that what we’re going to be able to offer people in the marketplace, they’re not losing anything,” said Honda’s assistant vice president of product planning, Gat Robinson.
Those who are about to die salute you!
As a kid, my brother had a record with just the sounds of F-! cars going through the gears on acceleration and into the corners on downshift. I suppose that those tunes had too much of an effect upon me to remain rational about the automatics for so many decades.
Being on the way out from running around without a mask, I thought that I would try it again. It would be better on the Tremec if it had straight cut gears, but you get what is offered. After all, it is a Cadillac.
Another thing is that I would prefer it without the supercharger as driving crap car hand-me-downs from my wife and daughters is that I get nervous about losing it on an off ramp. They dump this junk on me that scares me on the top heavy feeling.
For the 0.42% of wimmin who bought cars that are fun to drive, I salute them even if they drive with a nomex mask.
Hi Erie,
I was lucky enough to have been been born just in time to experience America before the fun stopped. I wasn’t old enough to drive in the ’70s, but by the time I was in the ’80s, cars from the ’70s and ’60s (and older) were still commonly in use, especially by kids like me. My high school parking lot was filled with what are now classic ’60s and ’70s Mustangs, Mopars,Chevys and such – all of them just used cars in the ’80s. Thus I got to drive and ride in many of them. Some with Muncie/Borg Warner manuals, leg press clutches and big blocks. I had a friend who bought a tired and primered but still operable big blog 4-speed Mopar . . . for $500.
You get a taste for stuff like that and FWD and four cylinders and a CVT doesn’t do much for you….
Color me stupid. I bought a Slattern in 2009 that was really an Opel. The thing had a five speed manual with no A/C, in order to be a base model.
That thing had great suspension for a smooth ride and it never bobbled in fast trips across the railroad tracks. The gearbox was ok and it all was pretty nice for 11,000 marked down from 16,000. It needed an overdrive to be fine with me. A lousy heater that took miles to warm up enough to notice, but baffling the radiator in very cold weather helped somewhat. I suppose that Germany is not as cold as Wisconsin.
I smashed it from getting drugged for a medical test, and would have been driving it since.
Now it is a CTS-V six on the floor that I am awaiting delivery.
I need some sort of exercise on my dead left foot.
Hi Erie,
Well, dammit… timing. I have become aware of an available ’86 Fiero GT with the four-speed manual, white with grey interior. If the world weren’t turned upside down, I’d be all over this one. As it is, I need a new pressure switch for my well.
I friend of min had a cherry Fiero manual V6 in red with black guts. I always like them. He was moving off to Britain and offered it to me for a good price, so I bought it. They were not a bad car, somewhat slower than it looked, but ok. There was some imagination from assorted geeks in the package. I hate white cars unless they knock off a few grand.
Not a big surprise at all, since by some remarkably insane decision within the market place, driving skill is not the least bit important in the act of DRIVING! In fact, its considered a distraction. Driving has become an unfortunate thing one must at least pay slight attention to that distracts one from their beloved cell phone while they go from point A to point B. And it doesn’t apply only to driving. The acquisition of any skill requires tedious practice and repetition, which are likewise distractions from the alter of the cell phone. And so, exemplary skills are not sought except by those truly in love with the idea of having them. Merely having an interest is no longer sufficient, since such competes with the almighty cell phone for attention. All hail the 3″X 5″ window on the universe. “The tail causes the donkey”.
I guess I will need to scrape a few more pennies together and step up to a Genesis G70 for my 3-pedal ,4-door fun.
Oops, forgot my handle.
This means there are no more new Accords in my future 🙁
When I was in Rome, damn near all the cars I saw had manuals. City cars besides.
No more manual Accords … that’s a shame.
In general, Japanese manufacturers kept manuals available a lot longer than US makers, who shifted nearly everything over to slush boxes decades ago.
Who can forget the startlingly crappy two-speed automatics that predominated in the 1950s and 1960s? “PowerGlide” could have been confused with an intimate lubricant, as customers willingly bent over for it.
Taxicabs in Tokyo still had three-on-the-tree manual shifts well into the 1990s, long after they’d disappeared here in the Land of Two Pedals.
At least the new Bronco keeps the flame alive with a 7-speed manual — really a 6-speed, plus a 95:1 rock crawler mode as the 7th selection. But the manual shift is available only with the 4-cylinder base engine.
*sigh*
At least we can still get manuals on motorcycles … until those are all crapified with e-drives.
Unfortunately I’m not surprised. IMHO the last Accord manual worthy of my attention was the V6 MT coupe from the prior generation. Too bad they didn’t offer it on the V6 sedans or I’d have bought one. They also stopped offering the HFP mods after that generation as well. All the good driver-centric stuff has now evaporated from the Accord line it seems. At least the Civic si and Type R lines remain STRICTLY manual only.