Enjoy! Please share pics when you get it!
The fact that Ford is even offering the Bronco with a manual gearbox in 2021 means there IS still a strong following, even if it’s only a fraction of the market. It’s still enough of a fraction that Ford included it.
I don’t know if you can see this page without registration, but the Bronco6g enthusiasts site is tracking stats about what people are ordering. Currently, the 7sp manual is at 15%.
So, not an enormous demand, but…
Lots of people want the more powerful engine, and that is only available with the 10sp Auto. If it could be mated to the manual, a lot more people might choose it.
That is what keeps happening, it’s like car companies no longer have the resources or expertise to build manual transmissions that handle power. I’m interested in a Subaru Crosstrek, but you can’t get the manual transmission with the more powerful engine, and you can’t get some of the cooler tech with the manual. Stupid IMO. Apparently only 6% of Crosstrek sales are manual, but stuff like this will make only make the trend worse.
But you’ve helped! The more people who buy a (new) car with a manual, the better (or at least less sucky) the future will be.
Thanks, beowulff, and thanks for dropping back in here with the news! Hope you love it!
That’s great that the new Bronco offers an MT! I wished that my Jeep Grand Cherokee offered an MT. Mine is a 2016 diesel and I’d have loved to have an MT with it.
My stick shift car is a C3 454 cid Corvette. The craft of footwork needed to get the proper engine rpm timed to the appropriate clutch engagement rate is something to be appreciated.
I like pausing the clutch release just the right amount of time during a 1-2 shift for the tires to break loose and give a nice ass end drift.
Driving a manual vehicle is a lost art. Hopes of a revival have fallen flat. With the rise of EVs and autonomous vehicles, only a few die-hards are holding on. (WaPo giftlink)
FYI, it’s only free if you create a WaPo account.
I was thinking about that just the other day. Down to a startling 0.6% of vehicles made for the United States now (way, way below the share of music sold as vinyl) and even down to 17-18% in places like the UK and Germany.
Sorry. An excerpt.
(1% now…) That’s a precipitous drop from the 34.6 percent of vehicles with manual transmissions produced in 1980.
The sharp shift away from manual has been unfolding for decades, long lamented by auto enthusiasts who cheered on hopes that the nostalgia-soaked driving experience might somehow find a new audience.
But the stick shift’s popularity hit multiple new lows in recent years, with no signs of a turnaround, thanks to new technologies and a rapidly changing marketplace. Buyers and automakers increasingly have turned to the sophisticated automatic drivetrains that now smoothly swap gears in fractions of a second and with better fuel efficiency. The average new vehicle today comes with seven gears, thanks to computers, twice as many as in 1980 and more gears than any ordinary driver would want to shift through using a manual gearbox.
At the same time, sporty cars — the kind that buyers might demand a stick shift to drive — have fallen out of favor, replaced by interest in hulking SUVs, which are almost always automatics. The stick shift’s demise has been hastened, too, by the rise of electric vehicles and increasingly autonomous vehicles. Neither have any need for a manual transmission…
This has been a major factor, I think, and the falling popularity of “sporty” cars and the rise of EVs had just exacerbated the problem. The first automatic transmissions were just two-speed and very inefficient. Modern ones with 6 or 7 speeds and selectable gear ranges are a completely different beast, and also far more reliable. I posted in this thread six years ago to say that I have absolutely no use for a stick-shift, and if anything, I feel even more strongly about it now. Maybe the lovers of stick shifts would also prefer no power-assisted steering or brakes, no ABS, and manual crank-down windows.
I forgot about this thread…
So, I received my 7sp manual Bronco Badlands in August of 2022. I now have 50K miles on it. I like driving the manual, but… If I had it to do over again, I would probably get the Automatic.
Sacrilege!
Why? For a variety of reasons:
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My wife can’t drive stick, and she absolutely refuses to learn.
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The Auto Bronco has a number of nice off-road features that the Manual doesn’t get.
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The more powerful engine (although, this is a minor issue).
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I think the Auto is simply better for offroading. You can use one-pedal mode to control your descent on steep hills, for example. Also, no worries about burning up the clutch when going UP steep hills.
The Manual is fun to drive around town, but the Bronco isn’t a sports car, so I don’t need that much control over my shift points.
No, because those of us who like manuals (although I haven’t owned one for more than 12 years) aren’t luddites opposed to all “modern”* improvements. What we like about shifting is that it puts us more in touch with the vehicle and the road, and makes the driving experience more exciting and enjoyable. None of the things you mentioned do that.
*All of the technology you have listed is at least 50 years old, so not exactly modern.
I wouldn’t say “none”. For instance, car enthusiasts have long complained about power steering lacking “road feel”, which was probably true with the early systems, but just like automatic transmissions, power steering has vastly improved.
In any case, I reiterate what I said 6 years ago:
Yeah, thinks for itself until it plows into a group of kids or a semi.
I want and demand total manual control over everything.
You can stop with the parade of straw men too, thanks.
That’s fine, and us stick-shift fans have different preferences. We aren’t trying to get you to change.
One thing I don’t like about automatics, 3 times now over the course of many years, I have forgotten to take my car out of low gear when coming out of the mountains and back onto the highway, doing 75 mph. I am somewhat hard of hearing and failed to hear the engine revving. I overheated my transmission and blew the oil out of it. It has been about 15 years since I have owned a stick shift, and I really do miss it.
I was not referring to FSD (so-called “full self-driving”) which I’m adamantly opposed to, at least until it can be fully certified as safer than a good human driver, which won’t happen in any foreseeable future. “Car that thinks for itself” was probably a poor choice of words; I was mainly referring to things like a PCM-controlled intelligent automatic transmission, engine control module (ECM), ABS, and the like.
How does a manual stick shift help with safety? I wouild think that in fact having more things to have to fiddle with would, if anything, be potentially distracting.
See my first point here about FSD with regard to straw men. 
Over the last year I’ve started teaching manual driving lessons, you can Google around to find the companies I work through probably. In a mid-size city I average about 2 - 3 lessons a month.
Maybe half of my students are enthusiasts who simply don’t have access to a manual to learn on, even through a friend. The other half is a hodge podge of reasons including:
- I’m getting married and I have a classic, manual car to drive away from the church steps in.
- I’m going oversees and I went to rent or drive a car that otherwise wouldn’t be available (manual rentals are cheaper even taking into account the cost of a lesson)
- I need to know how to drive a stick for some automotive related job
It’s odd that something as routine as it was 50 years ago is now a niche business opportunity.