After two very long years of listening to complaining, BMW will begin offering its ultra-super-duper-high-performance sedan, the M5, with a proper six-speed manual gearbox. With a clutch. Previously BMW decided that every vehicle would leave the factory with its SMG II gearbox, with no other choice. When racing around, the SMG II gearbox is great; it can upshift quicker than humanly possible, but that’s not the end all to what a gearbox ought to be. Smoothness, for instance, counts for something. It’s the same reasoning behind Maserati re-desiging its Quattroporte sedan so it can have a conventional automatic gearbox.
As far as we know, it’s only the M5 that’ll be getting the manual, not the M6. And strangely, it won’t be available in Europe.
