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Smart has announced they won't be selling cars in North America by the end of this year.

Chevy sells more 2-3X more Corvettes with a manual transmission than Mercedes sells AMG GTs in a year. Maybe they should get rid of the AMG GT because they sell so few.

Technically that might be true, but changing gears by yourself while driving on a curvy road on a nice sunny day in a nice sports car is one of the greatest pleasures a car ENTHUSIAST can have. Only a small fraction of sports car buyers actually take their cars to a track or care about extra couple seconds. There is a reason why Porsche, BMW and some other sport car manufacturers go back to offering manual transmission at least on some of their models.

Why does Smart and Mini still sell cars here?

It was a pretty decent month for M-B actually.

Mainstream sells tho; you can't NOT have black, white & red. That said; I can see 8 free / 2 extra cost, but I don't get 3 free/7 extra cost. You used to be able to have 15-some color choices, or over 20 at Cadillac... and only times you paid extra for some colors was at Cadillac. ALL modern brands have skimped on their color palettes tremendously.

We are talking about sports cars, not crossovers. You hardly can buy a regular car or crossover with manual transmission now anyway. Enthusiasts with different budgets buy cars like Miata and 911, so if automaker does make cars like that (and some choose not to, or simply can't afford to) than the automaker has to listen to the enthusiasts.

Yes..I remember the joys of driving a manual in a past life on winding, twisting hilly Ohio roads and winding, twisting Colorado mountain roads. It's not about 0-60 or lap times---the numbers mean nothing, it's enjoying the interaction w/ your car and the road.

2019 Double Cab/Standard Bed LT 2WD starts at $35,745. So a 3.0TD would be around $39,600 with no 4WD and no options. $28,300 is W/T regular cab price tier.

What? That LT base price must be either of these two: A: Shipped to the customer's home without wheels and tires, or B: After incentives... which will probably not be the same on the diesel when it comes out.

God only knows. Subaru is doing well.

The trend of only pursuing the most profitable projects (by today's measure) to please wall st is a little rearward looking. Margins on those projects may be eroded once your purchasing power has declined due to the fact that you cut a bunch of other volume projects with lower margins. A very poor and short term way of looking at the business. GM share will continue to decline, but so will their scale and purchasing power. Margins on their formerly high margin products will be pressured. New buyers won't be coming into the fold because you offer nothing to "start" selling them on. Ride sharing services? That's the answer? Again, a myopic view that works in a highly urbanized environment, but not for "middle america". What I see is a strategy that's not very comprehensive and has a lot of holes that will threaten their future capital programs.

Yeah, I was looking all the way over to the YTD comparisons column. Correct, it was actually a very good month. My mistake.

@smk4565 Where are all of the positives?

Read above numbers. The last two entire model years they sold 22% Corvettes with manual transmissions. I'll let you look up 2017. If they sold 20% with manual transmissions, that's roughly 3000-6000 per year for the last ten years.

^ was looking at Sierras at GMC.com : 3 no-charge paint colors, 7 extra charge. Ugh. I didn't see an option for 'paint delete' either.

Charging for chrome should be punishable by prison time.

There are some cars that need a good manual to really enjoy properly. The BR-Z/86 is one, the Miata/Fiata would be another. I'm sure the Porsches in a similar vein would be also.

Yeah, it seems like the local dealerships weren’t quite a busy.... Wife took a Trax for a test drive and got 4 sales guys checking up on her......

Yeah, I’m with the others here. It takes far more hand/foot to eye coordination to sling a manual around the track than literally any other transmission currently made. Paddle shifters are literally child’s play compared to manuals and I also have driven both while literally being raised on a manual.

I learned to drive before cell phones or cupholders. In olden days, i remember trying to drink coffee and eat a bagel while driving in a car w/ a manual..

What's the name of the manual, "Driving And Texting For Dummies"?

Never had to do the manual RHD thing, but I recall doing the car "hire" in Barbados, was always turning on the wipers by accident when trying to signal.. Eventually I just stopped signalling most of them didn't signal down their anyways. Was kind of fun, but the narrow roads and lack of lighting led me to stick to driving while the sun was up after the first night out. Would love to visit again soon.

Oh, throw in a manual transmission and I'm done. ?

Yeah, I figure it would take a couple of laps on the track at slow speed to get used to it and then I could kick it up a notch.

We had some hacked up consumer vehicles turned into mail carriers come into the shop I worked at and I only drove them around the parking lot(for the final QC for torquing the lugnuts) and it's weird as hell. I'm sure it doesn't take long to get used to but it is such an odd feeling being on the "wrong" side of the vehicle.

Another summer slow news day....

They should probably just cancel everything except the X3, X5, and X7 and the 3-series sedan. Then they'd make lots of profit.

Oh I wasn't worried about that... it would have to be track only anyway. It's just that I doubt they'd bring it here for that reason.

Bull. Sh!t. Not even comparable.

I bet in 5 year pa GM and Ford are cutting the Encore, Trax, Trailblazer, Ecosport, etc to “focus on more profitable models” and Equinox and Escape will be the base models, and post 2025 they might kill them off too if the RAV4 crushes the market the way the Camry did to the sedan market.

QFT times 1000. The Encore (and the Chevy Trax) should be sold basically anywhere in the world since most countries cannot handle the large CUVs or pickup trucks GM offers these days.

I mean Ford has the Mustang and GT and Chevy has the Camaro and Corvette.. But who's counting? And Caddy has or will have CT variants that are sports cars.

Minivans are all but dead- there were over a dozen now there's 3-4. Sedans are slipping every single year; the pie anyone is stealing from is smaller every year. IF a major industry downturn is looming (we'll see), thinning sedan offerings beforehand is probably a smart move. Eventually, you run out of places to fleet/fire sales sedans to.

That's what 'they' said about pickups… in 1970. Hyundai was 100% cars when it arrived here, it's now only 56% cars (by volume YTD) and that number has been slipping for years (both at hyundai/kia and industry-wide). CUVs / SUVs are firmly-established; calling them a 'fad' ignores decades of consumer data. Objectively speaking, the industry at large would be best served morphing a combination of the family sedan and the CUV (which is already the same underneath). All the brands have too many physically different models- with a morphed FutureKar, developmental costs would come way down and perhaps -just perhaps- some degree of control on runaway prices could be realized.

by the time the SUV/CUV fad fades, the market will have shifted more to EVs and autonomous vehicles... and who know what those will look like. Rolling toasters probably.

Yes it is happening again. Just like when affordable RWD sedans (mostly) disappeared after 1987. Now it is virtually all affordable FWD sedans that are disappearing into the ether. This is really sad, but it seems few people actually WANT to buy a FWD sedan when they want a FWD crossover instead.

Manuals are dead, automatics shift faster, get better gas mileage, etc. Total waste of money to engineer a vehicle to take a manual, and to design a manual transmission to put in it.

RIP to the manual transmission. Died because of lack of interest by car buyers.

So Ford and GM’s game plan is to put everything into pickups, SUVs and 1 sports car each, after giving up on minivans and sedans. Meanwhile the Asian car companies are stealing crossover/SUV business off Ford and GM and Toyota has new trucks coming and Hyundai and Kia are doing pickups. You can only retreat for so long until you run out of places to retreat to.

Chevy made the right call to go automatic only. Manual would add to the price, add to the engineering budget then they have to pay to certify it , and then they would sell 50 of them a year and have to discount them when they sit on dealer lots.