There's been a growing trend as of late, automakers are disregarding manuals, and some are dropping them entirely. Subaru has offered one extra bastion of support to manual junkies; The next-generation Subaru WRX will still offer a manual transmission.

Subaru North America CEO Tom Doll Spoke about the topic in a recent issue, confirming manual for the WRX, but not the Forester.

"We’ll still have manual transmissions in our performance line like for the WRX, but just not in the Forester."


Subaru U.K. Managing Director Chris Graham had first fed our fears at the Geneva Motor Show last month. Graham had stated that Subaru U.K. was focusing more on their EyeSight technology than on manuals, and we should expect their future lineup to reflect that. EyeSight's automatic emergency braking is a major interest to the company, a feature incompatible with manuals.

Subaru's Lineartronic continuously variable transmission (CVT) will become the sole option across most of the brand's vehicles. The BRZ is the only model offered with a traditional 6-speed automatic.

Doll stated that 3 to 5 percent of Foresters feature a manual transmission and that the efficiency and ease of use is greater with the CVT.

We don't know much about the WRX yet. We expect it'll be similar to the Viziv Performance concept we saw at last year's Tokyo Motor Show. The concept supposedly has a turbocharged flat-4 boxer engine, but there are also rumors that future WRXs and STIs will be hybrids. Only time will tell.