The days of the manual may not be as fleeting as once thought. A few days ago the full data on the BMW M2 production run for the first two years appeared online at BMWregistry.com and in it a few surprises. The biggest is the revelation that more manual M2s were sold in the US market than DCTs. More specifically the US saw a manual take-rate of 52.1% vs 47.9 for the DCT. Not surprising for those that look at this data often, the US (and Canada) had by far the highest manual take rate with Great Britain coming in second at only 30.1%. Hong Kong, Germany and Australia rounded out the countries in the 20% range.

M2 Manual Take Rate by Country
M2 Manual Take Rate by Country

On the other end is China with a .1% manual take rate.

In terms of colors the (extremely blue) Long Beach Blue was the most popular in the US and worldwide by a wide margin.

Recently BMWM CEO Frank Van Meel confirmed that next generation of the M2, M3 and M4 would likely have manuals as options and would also retain the rear wheel drive layout (unlike the recently launched M5). These numbers show why that’s actually important to the bottom line – at least in the US.

Save the manuals!