I Wish I Could Afford Either Of These

6 'Last Of The Line' Manual Supercars That Deserve Your Respect

Each of these incredible cars were replaced with something auto or semi-automatic only, and some even marked the end of a brand's kinship with the manual gearbox

1. Ferrari 599 GTB

If you fancy rocking up to your local Ferrari dealer and buying a brand new Prancing Horse with a stick shifter, you won’t have much luck. Yep, there’s not a single manual gearbox in the entire current range. In fact, due to Maranello’s quest for ultimate performance - which makes faffing with a clutch and a gear knob seem a little redundant - we’ve all but stopped thinking about the concept of a manual Ferrari. It now seems positively alien.

But, the death of the Ferrari manual is actually a very recent thing, as evidenced by the F12berlinetta’s predecessor: the 599 GTB. Although almost all were sold with the company’s ‘F1’ sequential gearbox, a very small number were built with a manual transmission. How small a number? 30 in total, with 20 going to the United States, and the rest spread throughout Europe.

The few buyers that opted for a gated manual version of the 612bhp V12 599 ended up with an incredible investment: the one you see above was auctioned by RM Sotheby’s earlier this year for $682,000, over three times what it would have sold for had it just been a paddle shift example.

3. Porsche 911 GT3 RS (997 4.0)

When they Cayman GT4 arrived with - incredibly - only a manual gearbox option, many expected the 991 GT3 RS to follow suit. But no. Instead of appeasing all those that had moaned about the boggo GT3 being available with a Doppelkupplungsgetriebe auto ‘box and nothing else, the hardcore RS was available with, well, just a Doppelkupplungsgetriebe.

It’s no surprise then, that values of the 4.0-litre versions of the old 997 RS - the last manual GT3 - are now nudging £300,000. But then again, the fact that it’s also the last 911 with hydraulic power steering and the last GT3 with a ‘Mezger’ engine doesn’t exactly help when it comes to keeping the price down to non-biblical levels.

It’s not all bad news for lovers of hot, manual 911s though, as the GT3 and GT3 RS is expected to have a new manual ‘brother’ in the form of the 911 R pretty soon.

Complete list (CarThrottle.com)